Volumetric Doppler angle correction for ultrahigh-resolution optical coherence Doppler tomography

Ultrahigh-resolution optical coherence Doppler tomography (μODT) demonstrates great potential for quantitative blood flow imaging owing to its large field of view and capillary resolution. However, μODT only detects the axial flow velocity and requires Doppler angle correction to retrieve the absolute velocity. Although methods for Doppler angle tracking of single or few large vessels have been reported, a method that enables angle correction of the entire 3D microvascular networks remains a challenge. Here, we present a method based on eigenvalue analysis of 3D Hessian matrix to retrieve the orientation of each tubular vessel. As the algorithm is voxel based, it is suitable for effective tracking of Doppler angle matrix and restoring the absolute flow over the 3D vascular flow networks. We present results on simulation and flow phantom studies to show its efficacy for accurate 3D angle tracking and absolute flow correction. Then, we perform an in vivo validation study on mouse micro-circulatory cerebral blood flow (CBF) networks, which clearly demonstrates the capability of this method for tracking the Doppler angle matrix of the highly complex 3D CBF networks.