Measurement of dynamic variations of polarized light in processed meat due to aging

Abstract

The propagation of laser light in biological tissues is of growing importance in many medical and food applications. This problem is seriously studied in live science. The biological tissues consist of cells which dimensions are bigger than wavelength of visible light and display large compositional variations, inhomogeneities, and anisotropic structures. Therefore a Mie scattering of transmitted or backscattered light occurs and different polarization states arise.The changes of polarization state due to the multiple scattering of light in the biological cellular tissues also allow measure the freshness of processed victuals. The transmitted and backscattered laser light exhibits multiple scattering on the thin slice of sample. The phenomenon is different if the cellular tissues are living or dead.In the case of meat, there are temporal and dynamic changes not only as a result of chemical process, but also geometric deformations due to the water evaporation from intracellular and extracellular sites. The polarization measurement shows the changes in polarization orientation due to the muscle orientation and meat aging.Two types of measurements were provided: a) Measurement of polarized light reflected and twice transmitted forward and backward through the biological tissue samples -meat slice attached on sample holder mirror. b) Measurement of polarized light transmitted through the biological tissue sample. The relationship between polarization changes and meat freshness, and a dynamic temporal behavior of polarization states in the aged meat is reported.