Simulating scan formation in multimodal optical coherence tomography: angular-spectrum formulation based on ballistic scattering of arbitrary-form beams

Abstract

We present a computationally highly efficient full-wave spectral model of OCT-scan formation with the following features: allowance of arbitrary phase-amplitude profile of illuminating beams; absence of paraxial approximation; utilization of broadly used approximation of ballistic scattering by discrete scatterers without limitations on their density/location and scattering strength. The model can easily incorporate the wave decay, dispersion, measurement noises with given signal-to-noise ratios and arbitrary inter-scan displacements of scatterers. We illustrate several of such abilities, including comparative simulations of OCT-scans for Bessel versus Gaussian beams, presence of arbitrary aberrations at the tissue boundary and various scatterer motions. The model flexibility and computational efficiency allow one to accurately study various properties of OCT-scans for developing new methods of their processing in various biomedical applications.

Adaptive selection of spatial scale to estimate axial gradients of inter-frame phase variations for mapping strains in optical coherence elastography

“…19,20 (the generalization of this simulation method for arbitrary illuminating-beam forms, including highly focused ones is described in ref. 21 ). Panel (b) presents the depth profiles corresponding to the vertical paths through the middle of phase-variation maps shown in Fig.…”

OCT-specific signal features for semi-automatic semantic scans annotation and segmentations

“…Using OCT-signal simulation approaches described in our previous papers 11,12 we evaluate the set of OCT speckle patterns parameters. The simulations are used to imitate OCT scans of multilayer tissues, tissues with various inclusions and other objects with properties close to tumor margins, edema (with simulated Brownian motions there 13 and others.…”

Amplitude Zone Plate in Adaptive Optics: Proposal of the Principle

“…This means that, at each moment in time, only those photons are registered that came from a certain area of the object. The presence of aberrations leads both to a decrease in the illumination of this region (probe beam aberrations) and to the loss of some of the photons when they enter the receiving system [10]. Therefore, for scanning OCT systems, the use of traditional adaptive optics (at least the use of wavefront correctors) turns out to be desirable and, possibly, the best option for obtaining high resolution and for the signal-to-noise ratio [11].…”