Mueller matrix polarimetry of plasmon resonant silver nano-rods: biomedical prospects

Fundamental understanding of the light-matter interaction in the context of nano-particles is immensely bene- fited by the study of geometry dependent tunable Localized Surface Plasmon Resonance (LSPR) and has been demonstrated to have potential applications in various areas of science. The polarization characteristics of LSPR in addition to spectroscopic tuning can be suitably exploited in such systems as contrast enhancement mech- anisms and control parameters. Such polarization characteristics like diattenuation and retardance have been studied here using a novel combination of Muller-matrix polarimetry with the T-matrix matrix approach for silver nano-rods to show unprecedented control and sensitivity to local refractive index variations. The study carried out over various aspect ratios for a constant equal volume sphere radius shows the presence of longitu- dinal (dipolar and quadrupolar) and transverse (dipolar) resonances; arising due to differential contribution of polarizabilities in two directions. The overlap regions of these resonances and the resonances themselves exhibit enhanced retardance and diattenuation respectively. The spectral and amplitude tunability of these polarimetric parameters through the aspect ratios to span from the minimum to maximum ([0, 1] in the case of diattenuation and [0, {\pi}] in the case of retardance) presents a novel result that could be used to tailor systems for study of biological media. On the other hand, the high sensitivity of diattenuation dip (caused by equal contribution of polarizabilities) could be possibly used for medium characterization and bio-sensing or bio-imaging studies.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, Proceedings of the Saratov Fall Meeting, 201

Automated detection of brain abnormalities in neonatal hypoxia ischemic injury from MR images.

We compared the efficacy of three automated brain injury detection methods, namely symmetry-integrated region growing (SIRG), hierarchical region splitting (HRS) and modified watershed segmentation (MWS) in human and animal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) datasets for the detection of hypoxic ischemic injuries (HIIs). Diffusion weighted imaging (DWI, 1.5T) data from neonatal arterial ischemic stroke (AIS) patients, as well as T2-weighted imaging (T2WI, 11.7T, 4.7T) at seven different time-points (1, 4, 7, 10, 17, 24 and 31 days post HII) in rat-pup model of hypoxic ischemic injury were used to assess the temporal efficacy of our computational approaches. Sensitivity, specificity, and similarity were used as performance metrics based on manual ('gold standard') injury detection to quantify comparisons. When compared to the manual gold standard, automated injury location results from SIRG performed the best in 62% of the data, while 29% for HRS and 9% for MWS. Injury severity detection revealed that SIRG performed the best in 67% cases while 33% for HRS. Prior information is required by HRS and MWS, but not by SIRG. However, SIRG is sensitive to parameter-tuning, while HRS and MWS are not. Among these methods, SIRG performs the best in detecting lesion volumes; HRS is the most robust, while MWS lags behind in both respects

Signum phase mask differential microscopy

We propose and experimentally demonstrate a differential microscopy method to obtain simultaneous amplitude, phase, and quantitative polarization gradient imaging in a single experimental embodiment. A full-field optical spatial differentiator is achieved in a relatively simple setup by placing a glass cover slip as a Signum phase mask in the Fourier plane of a standard 4-f imaging system and accordingly named Signum phase mask differential microscopy. The longstanding requisite of polarized light to obtain the spatial differentiation of the field at the object plane is eliminated in our scheme and, hence, leads to the emergence of quantitative differential polarization contrast imaging by integrating polarization degree of freedom as an additional contrast agent in the framework of differential microscopy. Implementation of the proposed differential imaging scheme in high-resolution microscopy is experimentally demonstrated alongside its functionality for a broad wavelength range. Simultaneous acquisition of differential phase, amplitude, and polarization (anisotropy) gradient imaging in a rather elementary optical setup enables a low-cost multi-functional differential microscopy system that is anticipated to emerge as a revolutionary tool in label-free imaging and optical image processing