This document may be broadly used as a standard reference regarding the current state of the IVOCT imaging modality, intended for researchers and clinicians who use IVOCT and analyze IVOCT data.

We review the development of phantoms for optical coherence tomography (OCT) designed to replicate the optical, mechanical and structural properties of a range of tissues. Such phantoms are a key requirement for the continued development of OCT techniques and applications. We focus on phantoms based on silicone, fibrin and poly(vinyl alcohol) cryogels (PVA-C), as we believe these materials hold the most promise for durable and accurate replication of tissue properties.

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We have developed deformable and durable optical tissue phantoms with a simple and well-defined microstructure including a novel combination of scatterers and a matrix material. These were developed for speckle and elastography investigations in optical coherence tomography, but should prove useful in many other fields. We present in detail the fabrication process which involves embedding silica microspheres in a silicone matrix. We also characterize the resulting phantoms with scanning electron microscopy and optical measurements. To our knowledge, no such phantoms were proposed in the literature before. Our technique has a wide range of applicability and could also be adapted to fabricate phantoms with various optical and mechanical properties.