Turning a commercial bright-field microscope into a precise polarization-sensitive imaging device

Polarization-sensitive microscopy has been a hot topic in biology over the last decades since many biological samples, including cancer cells and tendons, are intrinsically birefringent. Among its different applications, polarization-sensitive microscopy has enabled the detection and classification of diseases in biological samples by enabling the analysis of their polarimetric properties. In this contribution, we present an apparatus and method to estimate the Mueller matrix of microscopic samples using intensity-based images recorded from a bright-field microscope. We have validated the proposed technique using standard linear polarizers. The hallmark characteristics of our technique are its simplicity and efficiency, being suitable for analyzing biological and other birefringent samples.