Compressed intracellular motility via non-uniform temporal sampling in dynamic optical coherence tomography

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Imaging
• Optical Coherence Tomography
• Cellular Dynamics

Background:

• Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is valuable for dynamic processes but is data-intensive.
• Biological tissues have temporal features across scales, complicating data reduction.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a compressed data acquisition method for OCT using non-uniform temporal sampling.
• To capture both short- and long-term correlations in biological samples efficiently.

Main Methods:

• Non-uniform temporal sampling to reduce scan time and memory.
• Separation of white noise, fluctuating, and stationary features.
• Demonstration on mammary epithelial cell spheroids in 3D culture.

Main Results:

• Intracellular motility was captured without loss of signal integrity.
• Spatial patterns of motility were preserved.
• Hypothesis tests remained unchanged with up to eightfold data compression.

Conclusions:

• The proposed method enables compressive measurement of short- and long-term correlations.
• This facilitates new applications in (3+1)D imaging and high-throughput screening.
• Efficient data reduction is key for advancing dynamic OCT applications.