Evolution of polarimetric parameters of cadaver brain tissue with time and formaldehyde fixation in wide-field Mueller matrix images (Conference Presentation)

TL;DR: In this paper , Mueller Polarimetric Imaging (MPI) was used to acquire polarimetric maps of fresh cadaveric pig cerebral tissue and compare the parameter evolution over time following formaldehyde fixation.

Abstract: Surgical resection is the first-line treatment for most malignancies of the brain. However, the intraoperative identification of brain tumor tissue remains a challenge. In previous work, we demonstrated the potential of wide-field Mueller Polarimetric Imaging (MPI) to assess the anisotropy of fresh and fixed specimens of healthy brain, independently. Now, we use the MPI system to acquire polarimetric maps of fresh cadaveric pig cerebral tissue and compare the parameter evolution over time following formaldehyde-fixation. We demonstrated that despite the apparition of tissue morphological changes induced by formaldehyde fixation, this process preserves the polarimetric properties, remaining quantitatively similar to fresh tissue ones.