The performance of optical components can have significant dependence on polarization, as with the difference between TE and TM polarization in planar devices like AWG and SOA. Determination of the optical properties for the principal states of polarization can be needed, for instance to determine the polarization dependent wavelength of a bandpass filter. It can be complicated to adjust instrumentation to provide these polarization states. A fast and direct method to do this based on Mueller matrix analysis is described here.