Jones matrix-based polarization sensitive optical coherence tomography (JM-OCT) simultaneously measures optical intensity, birefringence, degree of polarization uniformity, and OCT angiography. The statistics of the optical features in a local region, such as the local mean of the OCT intensity, are frequently used for image processing and the quantitative analysis of JM-OCT. Conventionally, local statistics have been computed with fixed-size rectangular kernels. However, this results in a trade-off between image sharpness and statistical accuracy. We introduce a superpixel method to JM-OCT for generating the flexible kernels of local statistics. A superpixel is a cluster of image pixels that is formed by ...

Multiple reference optical coherence tomography (MR-OCT) is a recently developed, low-cost and compact time-domain OCT solution for primary care and consumer level applications. A combination of a voice coil actuator and a partial mirror (PM) extends the scan range for imaging depths of approximately 1 mm in biological samples. Our previous research on MR-OCT is based only on intensity information obtained from the depth-resolved interference signal. In this Letter, we extract the phase information from the MR-OCT signal and, hence, provide an additional contrast modality. The phase sensitivity of the system is measured to be approximately 0.2 and 1 ...

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a major cause of vision loss in the elderly. To better study the pathobiology of AMD, postmortem eyes offer an excellent opportunity to correlate optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging characteristics with histopathology. However, postmortem eyes from autopsy present challenges to standard OCT imaging including opaque anterior segment structures and standard of care autopsy processing resulting in oblique views to the macula. To overcome these challenges, we report a custom periscope attached by a standard mount to an OCT sample arm and demonstrate high quality macular OCT acquisitions in autopsy-processed eyes.

A research-grade OCT system was used to image in-vivo and without contact with the tissue, the cellular structure and microvasculature of the healthy human corneo-scleral limbus. The OCT system provided 0.95 µm axial and 4 µm (2 µm) lateral resolution in biological tissue depending on the magnification of the imaging objective. Cross-sectional OCT images acquired tangentially from the inferior limbus showed reflective, loop-like features that correspond to the fibrous folds of the palisades of Vogt (POV). The high OCT resolution allowed for visualization of individual cells inside the limbal crypts, capillaries extending from the inside of the POV’s ...

As a new optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging modality, there is no standardized quantitative interpretation of OCT angiography (OCTA) characteristics of sickle cell retinopathy (SCR). This study is to demonstrate computer-aided SCR classification using quantitative OCTA features, i.e., blood vessel tortuosity (BVT), blood vessel diameter (BVD), vessel perimeter index (VPI), foveal avascular zone (FAZ) area, FAZ contour irregularity, parafoveal avascular density (PAD). It was observed that combined features show improved classification performance, compared to single feature. Three classifiers, including support vector machine (SVM), k-nearest neighbor (KNN) algorithm, and discriminant analysis, were evaluated. Sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy were quantified to ...

We report a new application of optical coherence tomography (OCT) to investigate the cranial meninges in an animal model of brain injury in vivo. The injury is induced in a mouse due to skull thinning, in which the repeated and excessive drilling exerts mechanical stress on the mouse brain through the skull, resulting in acute and mild brain injury. Transcranial OCT imaging reveals an interesting virtual space between the cranial meningeal layers post skull thinning, which is gradually closed within hours. The finding suggests a promise of OCT as an effective tool to monitor the mechanical trauma in the small ...

Full-field optical coherence tomography (FF-OCT) is a widely used technique for applications such as biological imaging, optical metrology, and materials characterization, providing structural and spectral information. By spectral analysis of the backscattered light, the technique of spectroscopic-OCT enables the differentiation of structures having different spectral properties, but not the determination of their reflectance spectrum. For surface measurements, this can be achieved by applying a Fourier transform to the interferometric signals and using an accurate calibration of the optical system. An extension of this method is reported for local spectroscopic characterization of transparent samples and in particular for the determination of ...

Improving lateral resolution for cross-sectional optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging is difficult due to the rapid divergence of light once it is focused to a small spot. To overcome this obstacle, we introduce a fiber optics system that generates a coaxially focused multimode (CAFM) beam for depth of focus (DOF) extension. We fabricated a CAFM beam OCT probe and show that the DOF is more than fivefold that of a conventional Gaussian beam, enabling cross-sectional imaging of biological tissues with clearly resolved cellular and subcellular structures over more than a 400 μm depth range. The compact and straightforward design and ...

A visible light spectral domain optical coherence microscopy system was developed. A high axial resolution of 0.88 µm in tissue was achieved using a broad visible light spectrum (425 − 685 nm). Healthy human brain tissue was imaged to quantify the difference between white (WM) and grey matter (GM) in intensity and attenuation. The high axial resolution enables the investigation of amyloid-beta plaques of various sizes in human brain tissue and animal models of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). By performing a spectroscopic analysis of the OCM data, differences in the characteristics for WM, GM, and neuritic amyloid-beta plaques were found ...

The structure of domain walls (DW) in ferroelectric media is of great interest as this material is used for frequency doublers and other applications. We show that the structure of the DWs can nicely be visualized by high resolution optical coherence tomography (OCT). While the high group refractive index of lithium niobate allows a resolution much better than 1 µm, the large dispersion can blur the image and has to be compensated. Therefore, we developed an adaptive dispersion compensation algorithm based on maximizing the intensity of the DWs. By measuring a group of DWs, the mean period of the DWs ...

Endoscopic optical coherence tomography (OCT) instruments are mostly side viewing and rely on at least one proximal scan, thus limiting accuracy of volumetric imaging and en face visualization. Previous forward-viewing OCT devices had limited axial scan speeds. We report a forward-viewing fiber scanning 3D-OCT probe with 900 μm field of view and 5 μm transverse resolution, imaging at 1 MHz axial scan rate in the human gastrointestinal tract. The probe is 3.3 mm diameter and 20 mm rigid length, thus enabling passage through the endoscopic channel. The scanner has 1.8 kHz resonant frequency, and each volumetric acquisition takes ...

his paper examines for the first time the potential complementary imaging capabilities of Optical coherence tomography (OCT) and non-linear microscopy (NLM) for multi-modal 3D examination of paintings following the successful application of OCT to the in situ, non-invasive examination of varnish and paint stratigraphy of historic paintings and the promising initial studies of NLM of varnish samples. OCT provides image contrast through the optical scattering and absorption properties of materials, while NLM provides molecular information through multi-photon fluorescence and higher harmonics generation (second and third harmonic generation). OCT is well-established in the in situ non-invasive imaging of the stratigraphy of ...

Tortuosity is an important geometric vessel parameter and among the first microvascular alterations observed in various retinopathies. In the current study, a quantitative vessel tortuosity index (VTI) based on a combination of local and global centerline features is presented. Performance of VTI and previously established tortuosity indices were compared against human observers’ evaluation of tortuosity. An imageprocessing pipeline was developed for application of VTI in retinal vessels imaged by optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) in perifoveal (6 mm × 6 mm) and parafoveal (3 mm × 3 mm) regions centered on the fovea. Forty-one subjects (12 healthy control (NC) and 29 sickle ...

Extreme ultraviolet microscopy is technologically demanding and thus largely confined to synchrotron radiation facilities. However, specific benefits like high resolution and exceptional material contrast provide strong motivation for the development of table-top alternatives. We report on the first demonstration of coherence tomography, i.e., noninvasive cross-sectional imaging, with high harmonics. A depth resolution of 24 nm and very good material contrast are achieved. Excessively demanding optics for extreme ultraviolet radiation are avoided and artifacts due to the elementary geometry are suppressed with a novel three-step one-dimensional phase-retrieval algorithm. The images are recorded in reflection geometry, facilitating the analysis of, e ...

In fiber-based optical coherence tomography (OCT), the interference fringes suffer from the fading effect due to misalignment of the light polarization states between the reference and sample arms, resulting in sensitivity degradation and image intensity variation. We theoretically and experimentally analyzed the relation between the misalignment and the fading coefficient. Assuming that the variation of the light polarization in single-mode fiber (SMF) was a random process, we statistically quantified the fading effect. Furthermore, in OCT configuration based on the Michelson interferometer, we reported an interesting observation that the polarization states of light traveling a round-trip in SMF are not evenly ...

Modern manufacturing processes can achieve good throughput by requiring that manufactured products be screened by better quality control exercised at a quicker rate. This trend in the quality control of manufactured products increases the need for process-oriented precision metrology capable of performing faster inspections and yielding valuable feedback to the manufacturing system. This paper presents a spatially dispersed short-coherence interferometry sensor using diffraction orders of the zeroth and first order for a diffraction grating introduced as a new compact system configuration for surface profile measurement. In this modified design, the diffraction grating acts as the beam splitter/combiner. Diffractions for ...

Space-division multiplexing optical coherence tomography (SDM-OCT) is a recently developed parallel OCT imaging method in order to achieve multi-fold speed improvement. However, the assembly of fiber optics components used in the first prototype system was labor-intensive and susceptible to errors. Here, we demonstrate a high-speed SDM-OCT system using an integrated photonic chip that can be reliably manufactured with high precisions and low per-unit cost. A three-layer cascade of 1 × 2 splitters was integrated in the photonic chip to split the incident light into 8 parallel imaging channels with ~3.7 mm optical delay in air between each channel. High-speed imaging ...

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a non-invasive technique with a large array of applications in clinical imaging and biological tissue visualization. However, the presence of speckle noise affects the analysis of OCT images and their diagnostic utility. In this article, we introduce a new OCT denoising algorithm. The proposed method is founded on a numerical optimization framework based on maximum-a-posteriori estimate of the noise-free OCT image. It combines a novel speckle noise model, derived from local statistics of empirical spectral domain OCT (SD-OCT) data, with a Huber variant of total variation regularization for edge preservation. The proposed approach exhibits satisfying ...

High-resolution imaging of the human retina has always been a challenge due to imperfect optical properties of the human cornea and lens, which limit the achievable resolution. We present a noniterative digital aberration correction (DAC) to achieve aberration-free cellular-level resolution in optical coherence tomography (OCT) images of the human retina in vivo . The system used is a line-field spectral-domain OCT system with a high tomogram rate, reaching 2.5 kHz. Such a high speed enables us to successfully apply digital aberration correction for not only imaging of human cone photoreceptors but also to obtain an aberration- and defocus-corrected 3D volume ...

Automotive coating systems are designed to protect vehicle bodies from corrosion and enhance their aesthetic value. The number, size and orientation of small metallic flakes in the base coat of the paint has a significant effect on the appearance of automotive bodies. It is important for quality assurance (QA) to be able to measure the properties of these small flakes, which are approximately 10 μm in radius, yet current QA techniques are limited to measuring layer thickness. We design and develop a time-domain (TD) full-field (FF) optical coherence tomography (OCT) system to scan automotive panels volumetrically, non-destructively and without contact ...

Evaluation of clinical images is essential for diagnosis in many specialties. Therefore the development of computer vision algorithms to help analyze biomedical images will be important. In ophthalmology, optical coherence tomography (OCT) is critical for managing retinal conditions. We developed a convolutional neural network (CNN) that detects intraretinal fluid (IRF) on OCT in a manner indistinguishable from clinicians. Using 1,289 OCT images, the CNN segmented images with a 0.911 cross-validated Dice coefficient, compared with segmentations by experts. Additionally, the agreement between experts and between experts and CNN were similar. Our results reveal that CNN can be trained to ...