Polarization imaging for identifying the microscopical orientation of biological structures

Biological structures such as wood fibers or tissue cells often have a characteristic alignment of their molecular architecture. Therefore cells, tissues, organelles can show birefringence and dichroism with the passage of light, which can be detected and measured accurately by performing polarized light imaging. This technique allows to highlight both micro- and nano-structures of the materials, characterizing the anisotropy of the optical properties due precisely to the specific molecular order. Hence, absorption, reflection, refraction and dispersion measures of polarized light by structured materials is a powerful tool for analyzing the morphological order of the organization.