Study of dispersion extraction for optical coherence tomography imaging

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Optics
• Optical Imaging
• Metrology

Background:

• Dispersion mismatch in optical coherence tomography (OCT) degrades axial resolution and blurs images.
• Biological sample dispersion contains characteristic information, making its extraction valuable.
• Current OCT dispersion extraction methods have limitations in accuracy and stability.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare conventional OCT dispersion extraction methods.
• To propose and validate an improved iterative method for dispersion extraction.
• To demonstrate the application of the proposed method in biological samples.

Main Methods:

• Comparative analysis of five conventional OCT dispersion extraction techniques.
• Development of an improved iterative algorithm for dispersion extraction.
• Experimental validation using optical glasses and zebrafish eyes.

Main Results:

• The iterative method demonstrated superior accuracy and stability among conventional techniques.
• The proposed improved iterative method showed enhanced accuracy and stability in simulations.
• Experimental results for optical glasses closely matched reference values.
• Successful extraction of dispersion characteristics from zebrafish eyes was achieved.

Conclusions:

• The improved iterative method offers higher accuracy and stability for dispersion extraction.
• OCT-based dispersion analysis is a promising tool for clinical practice.
• Dispersion characteristics can serve as a valuable parameter in biological sample analysis.