Ricerc@Sapienza

Biological structures such as wood fibers or tissue cells often have a characteristic alignment of their molecular
architecture. Therefore cells, tissues, organelles can show birefringence and dichroism with the passage of light,
which can be detected and measured accurately by performing polarized light imaging. This technique allows to
highlight both micro- and nano-structures of the materials, characterizing the anisotropy of the optical properties
due precisely to the specific molecular order. Hence, absorption, reflection, refraction and dispersion measures of
polarized light by structured materials is a powerful tool for analyzing the morphological order of the organization.