Dielectric-tensor reconstruction of highly scattering birefringent samples

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel dielectric tensor tomography algorithm capable of fully characterizing highly scattering birefringent samples, including thick biological tissues, by accounting for multiple scattering effects.

Contribution

The study presents a new vectorial inverse scattering method with error backpropagation for dielectric tensor reconstruction in complex birefringent samples.

Findings

Successfully reconstructed dielectric tensors of synthetic samples

Demonstrated effective characterization of biological tissue samples

Validated the approach with experimental results

Abstract

Many important microscopy samples, such as liquid crystals, biological tissue, or starches, are birefringent in nature. They scatter light differently depending on the light polarization and molecular orientations. The complete characterization of a birefringent sample is a challenging task because its 3 x 3 dielectric tensor must be reconstructed at every three-dimensional position. Moreover, obtaining a birefringent tomogram is more arduous for thick samples, where multiple light scattering should also be considered. In this study, we developed a new dielectric tensor tomography algorithm that enables full characterization of highly scattering birefringent samples by solving the vectoral inverse scattering problem considering multiple light scattering. We proposed a discrete image-processing theory to compute the error backpropagation of vectorially diffracting light. Finally, our theory was experimentally demonstrated using both synthetic and biologically birefringent samples.