Adaptive spectral apodization for sidelobe reduction in optical coherence tomography images

Area of Science:

• Optical imaging systems
• Signal processing in optics
• Coherence domain optical methods

Background:

• Non-uniform system bandpass is common in imaging.
• Minimizing sidelobes is crucial for spatial resolution in temporal coherence imaging.
• Conventional methods often control source spectra, which may not yield optimal object scattering density estimation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose and demonstrate a new method for sidelobe suppression.
• To achieve low sidelobes in the impulse response.
• To enable accurate scattering density estimation even with complex spectra.

Main Methods:

• Development of a novel sidelobe suppression algorithm.
• Application to temporal coherence imaging systems.
• Testing with highly non-uniform, non-Gaussian source spectra.

Main Results:

• Demonstrated significant reduction in sidelobes.
• Achieved low sidelobes irrespective of spectrum characteristics.
• Improved accuracy in estimating scattering density.

Conclusions:

• The proposed method effectively suppresses sidelobes.
• It overcomes limitations of conventional spectral control approaches.
• Enables high-fidelity imaging with challenging spectral conditions.