Polarized Light Microscopy

Abstract

Polarized light is a contrast-enhancing technique that improves the quality of the image obtained with birefringent materials when compared to other techniques such as darkfield and brightfield illumination, differential interference contrast, phase contrast, Hoffman modulation contrast, and fluorescence. Polarized light microscopes have a high degree of sensitivity and can be utilized for both quantitative and qualitative studies targeted at a wide range of anisotropic specimens. Qualitative polarizing microscopy is very popular in practice, with numerous volumes dedicated to the subject. In contrast, the quantitative aspects of polarized light microscopy, which is primarily employed in crystallography, represent a far more difficult subject that is usually restricted to geologists, mineralogists, and chemists. However, steady advances made over the past few years have enabled biologists to study the birefringent character of many anisotropic sub-cellular assemblies.