This book highlights the first systematic synthesis of various research approaches in forensic medical diagnosis of the morphological and polycrystalline structure of human biological tissues and biological fluids. One of the global challenges in such diagnosis is the assessment of actual time of death. The relevance and objectivity of such studies are given by the innovative use of complex multifunctional methods using lasers and Mueller-matrix polarimetry, which is presented in this book. As a result, within the framework of the statistical, correlation and fractal approaches, diagnostic relationships were established between the time parameters of the transformation of the topographic structure of polarization-inhomogeneous microscopic images of biological preparations and necrotic changes in the morphological structure of biological tissues of the deceased. On this foundation, new forensic medicine criteria have been developed for objective determination of time of death.

This book presents a new diagnostic approach that utilizes complex statistical, correlation, fractal, and singular analysis of spatial distribution of the Stokes vector of scattered polarized light in different diffraction zones. The technique is able to identify changes in the distribution of optical axes and the birefringent indices of multi-layered fibrillar networks of biological tissues. The book also presents various scenarios for the formation of polarization singularities in laser speckle images of phase-inhomogeneous, multi-layered biological tissues in terms of the characteristic values of Mueller-matrix images. Moreover, in the context of potential diagnostic applications, it discusses the states of polarization singularities and their changes associated with the pathological abnormalities of the extracellular matrix of human tissues, its spatial peculiarities and structural orientation.