California Institute of Technology

University of California

University of Southern California

Jeffrey P Fingler

Scott E Fraser

Daniel M Schwartz

This disclosure relates to the field of Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT). This disclosure particularly relates to an OCT system with improved motion contrast. This disclosure particularly relates to motion contrast methods for such OCT systems. The OCT system of this disclosure may have a configuration that scans a physical object, which has a surface and a depth, with a beam of light that has a beam width and a direction; acquires OCT signals from the scan; forms at least one A-scan using the acquired OCT signals; forms at least one B-scan cluster set using the acquired OCT signals that includes at least two B-scan clusters that each include at least two B-scans. The B-scans within each B-scan cluster set are parallel to one another and parallel to the direction of the beam of light. The OCT system may have a configuration that calculates OCT motion contrast using the at least one B-scan cluster set. This OCT system may form and display an image of the physical object.

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) system with improved motion contrast

This disclosure relates to the field of Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT). This disclosure particularly relates to an OCT system having a configuration that uses a phase sensitive B-scan registration method. In this disclosure, an OCT system may have a configuration that scans a physical object, acquires OCT signals to form B-scans, uses these B-scans to determine an optimal shift in an axial direction by using total phase error between B-scans, and align B-scans, thereby minimizing effects of motion that may occur during scanning of the physical object.

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) system with phase-sensitive B-scan registration

The methods described herein are methods to ascertain motion contrast within optical coherence tomography data based upon phase variance. The phase variance contrast observes the nanometer scale motion of scatterers associated with Brownian motion and other non-flow motion. The inventive method of calculating motion contrast from the phase variance can differentiate regions of different mobility based on the motion contrast differences, and can use the phase information to characterize mobility properties of the scatterers. In flow regions, the inventive method for acquiring and analyzing motion contrast can identify the regions as well as characterize the motion. Furthermore, the inventive method can determine quantitative flow estimation, the index of refraction variations, and absorption variations within flow regions.

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Orange, CA, United States of America

Jeffrey P Fingler