Outline

Peter Letendre, Ashley Cummings
Joe Pow
Research Outline
28 July 2017
Outline
Purpose
  • Create a new method of detecting skin cancer in a non-invasive manner with polarized light
Background
  • Polarization of light is the orientation of light in its movement
    • The CCD we are using measures linear polarization at 0, 45, 90 and 135 degrees
  • Healthy skin is birefringent, Cancerous skin is not birefringent
    • Birefringence is when light hits a surface and the light splits into a parallel and perpendicular planes that have different indexes of refraction
    • Healthy skin reflects elliptical polarized light, cancerous skin reflects circularly polarized light when hit with circularly polarized light
Methods
  • Materials:
    • CCD camera (12 bit), polarizer, quarter-wave plate, light source, collimator, skin samples, acrylic track
  1. Choose angle of light projection using acrylic track.
  2. Project collimated light into a polarizer and quarter wave plate to generate circularly polarized light, which is then projected onto sample.
  3. Read backscattered light from skin sample on CCD
Interpretation
  • Backscattered light that stays circularly polarized from the images of the CCD are cancerous.
  • Backscattered light that has a preference in overall polarization with healthy skin.
Results: N/A

Conclusion: N/A

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