# Review on Complete Mueller Matrix Optical Scanning Microscopy Imaging
## 3 Mueller Matrix Applications
### Material Science  
Besides these main applications for the biomedical diagnosis, the characterization of the full optical property of nanostructures at high speed rate and in a cheap way offered  
Figure 6: Quantitative imaging of the full MM images for biomedical diagnosis. (i) Non-Polarized (NP), SHG, Retardance (R) and depolarization index (Pd) images of stained surgical human liver biopsies (F0 and F4 Metavir grades). (ii) Retardance (R) and its orientation (\(\alpha_{R}\)) image of a human liver biopsy. (iii) Polarimetric images of fixed zebrafish embryos and larvae at 4 hpf (hours post fertilization), 24 hpf, 48 hpf and 72 hpf. The images (a), (c), (e), (g) correspond to the total collected intensity from the MM, which is the m00 element. The images (b), (d), (f), (h) are images coded in Diattenuation (D), in Retardance and its azimuthal orientations \(\alpha_{D}\) and \(\alpha_{R}\), respectively. Adapted with permission from: (i) [74]; (ii) [31], © The Optical Society; (iii) [45], Scientific Reports, under a Creative Commons license ([[http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)]([http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0))). by SLM is suitable in real-world industrial manufacturing applications. The main challenge of this application is the capability of characterizing the sample at the nanoscale. In polarimetry, most of the ellipsometers are dedicated for characterizing thin films in microelectronics [75; 76; 77]. However, this approach is based on the analysis of the diffraction pattern in widefield imaging and are compared with models using elementary decomposition of the MM [78; 79]. The characterization of nanostructures has been widely studied by electron microscopy or in a non-linear optical approach. These approaches provides valuable information related to the sample conformation at the nanoscale but are based on the high power light dose absorption and are invasive in term of sample preparation. MM has proven to overcome these issues and its easy experimental implementation gives the opportunity of tracking live polarimetric changes. One of the few examples in the literature related to in vivo live imaging using SLM has been proposed in Reference [50] as shown in Figure 7a. This work consisted in studying the polarimetric modifications of starch granule under certain conditions (thermal, hydration level and temporal). Indeed, starch is of interest due  
Figure 7: Quantitative MM images taken from material science applications. (**a**) Comparative study of the SHG images of hydrated and dry starch granules after heating. (**b**) Linear retardance RL, and its orientation \(\alpha_{R}\) of a gabbro rock section. Adapted with permission from: (**a**) [50], Scientific Reports, under a Creative Commons license ([[http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)]([http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0))); (**b**) [31], © The Optical Society. to its easy, cheap availability and its concentric shell structure forms a natural photonic crystal structure easy to model. In the past year, studying the starch structures has been of interest since it is a major source of our daily diet and its conformation plays a significant role for the quality of food. In this work, the denaturation and the phase transition after a thermal change has been studied through the Degree of Polarization (DOP) Linear (DOLP or Circular (DOCP) indicating that starch has a greater degree of ultrastructural amylopectin order. It has proven that the degradation at the intramolecular level occurs in hydrated starch whereas disruption of surface in dry only while no significant change of polarization properties are observed at higher temperatures in case of dry starch. Thanks to the wide range of parameters provided by MM, other physical quantities could be use for interpreting crystal at the microscopic level as shown in Figure 7b.