We have developed a highly phase stable optical coherence tomography and vibrometry system that attaches directly to the accessory area of a surgical microscope common to both the otology clinic and operating room. Careful attention to minimizing sources of phase noise has enabled a system capable of measuring vibrations of the middle ear with a sensitivity of < 5 pm in an awake human patient. The system is shown to be capable of collecting a wide range of information on the morphology and function of the ear in live subjects, including frequency tuning curves below the hearing threshold, maps of tympanic membrane vibrational modes and thickness, and measures of distortion products due to the nonlinearities in the cochlear amplifier.

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We present the preliminary results of quantitative characterization of normal and malignant breast tissues in a human subject. The tissue was probed non-invasively by multi-wavelength (674, 786, 803, 849, and 956 nm) multifrequency (50MHz-1GHz) diffuse photon density waves (DPDW). The optical characterization of the lesion was co-registered with Ultrasound. Ultrasound images provide us information about the lesion size and position which were used for optical characterization of localized inhomogeneity (lesion). Multifrequency allows us to extract the optical properties (the absorption and reduced scattering coefficients) at a single source-detector separation. We assign the optical properties of the lesion by fitting the data to analytic solutions of diffuse photon density waves for a semi-infinite heterogeneous medium. We find that the lesion and normal tissues are clearly resolvable. We also find that the optical contrast is elevated by analyzing the data with the sophisticated heterogenous model (as opposed to a homogeneous model). Multi-wavelength spectroscopic measurements indicate that the lesion might have higher water concentration.