Deep tissue optoacoustic imaging of polarized structures

The ability to image polarization-selective tissue structures may provide valuable information on tissue anatomy, morphogenesis, and disease progression. So far, intensive light scattering in biological medium has limited implementation of polarization imaging to superficial tissue layers. We suggest overcoming the scattering problem using polarization-sensitive optoacoustic imaging. Due to intrinsically high spatial resolution and sensitivity of the method, it holds promise of becoming highly accurate modality for interrogation of small polarized structures deep in biological tissues. We show initial tomographic results in tissue-mimicking phantoms having polarization dichroism contrast.