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Artifacts in polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography caused by polarization mode dispersion
Martin Villiger1, Ellen Ziyi Zhang, Seemantini Nadkarni
1Wellman Center for Photomedicine, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts 02114, USA. mvilliger@partners.org
Optics Letters
|March 19, 2013
Summary
Polarization mode dispersion (PMD) creates artificial birefringence in optical coherence tomography images. Limiting system PMD and using spatial averaging minimizes these image artifacts for clearer biological tissue analysis.
Area of Science:
- Biomedical Optics
- Optical Imaging
- Biophysics
Background:
- Polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography (PS-OCT) is crucial for imaging biological tissues.
- Polarization mode dispersion (PMD) is a significant challenge in PS-OCT, degrading image quality.
- PMD introduces artificial birefringence, leading to misinterpretation of tissue properties.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate and analyze the impact of PMD on PS-OCT imaging of biological tissues.
- To demonstrate the origin and characteristics of PMD-induced artifacts.
- To establish criteria for mitigating these artifacts in PS-OCT.
Main Methods:
- Experimental measurements of PS-OCT on biological samples.
- Numerical simulations to model PMD effects.
- Analysis of local retardation values and birefringence.
- Investigation of system PMD relative to axial resolution.
Main Results:
- PMD introduces spatially confined bias in local retardation values.
- This bias results in artificial regions of high sample birefringence.
- Artifacts are minimized when system PMD is less than the system axial resolution.
- Spatial averaging beyond speckle size is necessary to remove residual PMD bias.
Conclusions:
- PMD significantly corrupts PS-OCT images by creating false birefringence.
- Controlling system PMD and employing appropriate spatial averaging are essential for accurate PS-OCT.
- These findings improve the reliability of PS-OCT for quantitative birefringence measurements in biological tissues.
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