Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Markus Laubscher.
The two previously reported calculations of the amplitude distribution of speckles in optical coherence tomography, each based on a different mathematical formulation, yield different results. We show that a modification of an initial assumption in one of the formulations leads to equivalent results.
We present a new model of optical coherence tomography (OCT) taking into account multiple scattering. A theoretical analysis and experimental investigation reveals that in OCT, despite multiple scattering, the field backscattered from the sample is generally spatially coherent and that the resulting interference signal with the reference field is stationary relative to measurement time. On the basis of this result, we model an OCT signal as a sum of spatially coherent fields with random-phase arguments--constant during measurement time--caused by multiple scattering. We calculate the mean of such a random signal from classical results of statistical optics and a Monte Carlo simulation. OCT signals predicted by our model are in very good agreement with a depth scan measurement of a sample consisting of a mirror covered with an aqueous suspension of microspheres. We discuss other comprehensive OCT models based on the extended Huygens-Fresnel principle, which rest on the assumption of partially coherent interfering fields.
We present a comprehensive study of multiple-scattering effects in wide-field optical coherence tomography (OCT) realized with spatially coherent illumination. Imaging a sample made of a cleaved mirror embedded in an aqueous suspension of microspheres revealed that, despite temporal coherence gating, multiple scattering can induce significant coherent optical cross talk. The latter is a serious limitation to the method, since it prevents shot-noise-limited detection and diffraction-limited imaging in scattering samples. We investigate the dependence of cross talk on important system design parameters, as well as on some relevant sample properties. The agreement between theoretical and experimental results for the wide range of parameters investigated was very good, in both the lateral and the axial dimensions. This further confirms the validity of the model developed in our companion paper [J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 22, 1369-1379 (2005)].