According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer, there were 300,000 new cases of melanoma and over 1,000,000 new cases of non-melanoma skin cancer in 2018.^1,2 Furthermore, the true number of skin cancer cases may be even higher than this figure due to many factors such as the registration methodology of skin cancer, the quality of skin cancer data.³ Without early detection and preventative control, melanoma can quickly develop and become far riskier, e.g., from stage I with a five-year survival rate of 97% to stage IV with a five-year survival rate of just 20% to 10%.³ Therefore, the early detection of skin cancer is essential in improving the prognosis of skin cancer patients.

An analytical technique based on Stokes polarimetry and the Mueller matrix method is proposed for extracting the effective linear birefringence, linear dichroism, circular birefringence, circular dichroism, linear depolarization, and circular depolarization properties of turbid media. In contrast to existing analytical models, the model proposed extracts the effective parameters in a decoupled manner and considers not only the circular dichroism properties of the sample, but also the depolarization properties. The results show that the proposed method enables all of the effective parameters to be measured over the full range. Moreover, it is shown that the extracted value of the depolarization index is unaffected by the order in which the depolarizing Mueller matrix is decomposed during the extraction procedure. Finally, a method is proposed for calibrating the optical rotation angle of a polystyrene microsphere suspension containing dissolved D-glucose ($C6H12O6$) powder in accordance with the distance between the sample and the detector. The experimental results show that the sensitivity of the resulting D-glucose measurement is equal to approximately $1.73deg/M$.

A surface plasmon resonance (SPR) prism coupler is proposed for the high-resolution non-invasive (NI) measurement of the circular birefringence (CB) properties of turbid media. The feasibility of the proposed device is demonstrated by means of numerical simulations. It is shown that the SPR sensor enables the CB properties to be detected with a resolution of up to 8.9 × 10⁻⁷ RIU (refractive index units) for refractive indices in the range of 1.3∼1.4. Moreover, for tissue phantom solutions containing 2% lipofundin, the device has a detection limit of 3.72 mg/dL. This resolution performance satisfies the detection limit of 10 mg/dL stipulated by the U.S FDA for point-of-care glucose monitoring devices. Thus, the proposed SPR sensor has significant potential for NI glucose sensing in such applications as diabetes detection and management.

A decoupled analytical technique based on the Mueller matrix method and the Stokes parameters is proposed for extracting effective parameters of anisotropic optical materials in linear birefringence (LB), linear dichroism (LD), circular birefrinegence (CB), and circular dichroism (CD) properties. This technique is essential in determining the optical properties of opto-electric or biomedical materials for the development of advanced inspection and/or diagnostic applications. The error and resolution analysis of the proposed approach is demonstrated by extracting the effective parameters given an assumption of errors ranging $±0.005$ in the values of the output Stokes parameters. The results confirm the ability of the proposed method to yield full-range measurements of all the optical parameters. The decoupled nature of the analytical model yields several important advantages, including an improved accuracy and the ability to extract the parameters of optical samples with only LB, CB, LD, or CD property without using compensation technique or pretreatment. Moreover, by decoupling the extraction process, the “multiple solutions” problem inherent in previous models presented by the current group is avoided.

An analytical technique based on the Mueller matrix method and the Stokes parameters is proposed for extracting five effective parameters on the principal axis angle, phase retardance, diattenuation axis angle, diattenuation and optical rotation angle of anisotropic optical materials. The linear birefringence (LB) / circular birefringence (CB) properties and linear diattenuation (LD) properties are decoupled within the analytical model. The analytical method is then integrated with a genetic algorithm to extract the optical properties of samples with linear birefringence property using a fiber-based polarimeter. The result demonstrates the feasibility of analytical model in characterizing five effective parameters of anisotropic optical material. Also, it confirms that the proposed fiber-based polarimeter provides a simple alternative to existing fiber-based probes for parameter measurement in the near field or the remote environment. A low birefringence fiber-based polarimeter based on effective parameters and genetic algorithm without using a fiber polarization controller is first proposed confirmatively.