Attenuation coefficient estimation in Fourier-domain OCT of multi-layered phantoms

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is an interferometric imaging technique that can generate high-resolution three-dimensional images of biological tissues. Many tissues, such as the retina or the blood vessel wall are composed of a number of distinct tissues, each having its own optical tissue properties. OCT has been widely used to capture structural information of tissues for clinical tasks such as the diagnosis of retinal and vascular diseases. Recently, there has been a growing interest in the field of ophthalmology for utilizing optical tissue properties, such as the attenuation coefficient, for diagnosis and disease progression. The attenuation coefficient can be estimated from the intensity or amplitude of the OCT signal and can be used as a biomarker for the diagnosis and monitoring of diseases [1-6] as well as for tissue characterization [7-9]. Several methods based on single [10-12] and multiple [13,14] scattering of light have been presented for estimating the attenuation coefficient in a homogeneous medium using OCT. Only a few methods have been developed to estimate the attenuation coefficient of the tissue while taking into account the effect of the beam shape on the acquired OCT signal. Smith et al. [15] Optical properties, such as the attenuation coefficients of multi-layer tissue samples, could be used as a biomarker for diagnosis and disease progression in clinical practice. In this paper, we present a method to estimate the attenuation coefficients in a multi-layer sample by fitting a single scattering model for the OCT signal to the recorded OCT signal. In addition, we employ numerical simulations to obtain the theoretically achievable precision and accuracy of the estimated parameters under various experimental conditions. Finally, the method is applied to two sets of measurements obtained from a multi-layer phantom by two experimental OCT systems: one with a large and one with a small Rayleigh length. Numerical and experimental results show an accurate estimation of the attenuation coefficients when using multiple B-scans. (c) 2021 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement

Automated summary

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is widely used for capturing structural information of tissues for clinical tasks such as diagnosing retinal and vascular diseases. Recently, there has been a growing interest in the field of ophthalmology for utilizing optical tissue properties for diagnosis and disease progression.