A system and method for characterizing tissue organization using polarization sensitive optical coherence (PSOCT) tomography is provided. A PSOCT device is controlled, by a computing device, to obtain PSOCT A-line scans across a sample. For each of the PSOCT A-line scans, the computing device determines a frequency characteristic of any banding present in a respective PSOCT A-line retardance scan. The computing device controls display device to render a map of the frequency characteristic.