Healthy malpighian tissue is characterized by a strong anisotropy. Indeed, mean values of 60° and 40° for the Retardance have been measured for Zone 1 and Zone 2 respectively as shown in Fig. 6(c,g). A mean value of about 10° has been measured for Zone 3 as shown in Fig. 6(g). Retardance can be a relevant polarimetric parameter to distinguish malpighian from glandular epithelium. Indeed, when superimposing the histograms for the polyp and for LED Down Light the malpighian epithelium, little overlap is observed, as shown in Fig. 6(k). The polyp also appears to be less depolarizing than the healthy tissue. A mean value of 0.75 has been measured for Zone 1 and Zone 2 as shown in Fig. 6(b–f) while the mean value of the Depolarization in Zone 3 is about 0.6, as shown in Fig. 6(f). An overlap between the histograms is observed due to the spatial inhomogeneity of this parameter within the malpighian epithelium, in particular for Cervix 1. The spatial variation of Retardance and Depolarization are due to the presence of specular reflections in certain zones and to spatial inhomogeneity of vascularization which can strongly affect the determination of these parameters. Finally, the Azimuth appears to be oriented around 90° for both Zone 1 and Zone 2 as shown in Fig. 6(d–h) while it is characterized by a pixelwise inhomogeneity in the Zone 3 as shown in Fig. 6(h). The strong Retardance observed in the zones around the malpighian epithelium has been attributed to the signature of a well-ordered collagen layer composing the subepithelial connective tissue13. Otherwise, the polyp does not show a well-defined inner organization in the subepthelial connective tissue, which results in low Retardance values as well as erratic Azimuth orientations, as can be seen in Fig. 6(g,h). In particular, the value of the Azimuth varies between 0° and 180° with strong pixel to pixel variation (Fig. 6(l)).