Polarization management to mitigate misalignment-induced fringe fading in fiber-based optical coherence tomography

Wang, Nanshuo; Liu, Xinyu; Xiong, Qihua; Xie, Jun; Chen, Shi; Liu, Linbo

doi:10.1364/ol.42.002996

Cited by 13 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Without polarization-diversity detection, birefringence can cause polarization fading in the OCT intensity signal. 15 Polarization fading is commonly observed as "banding patterns," that is, local regions of alternating high and low signal along the depth direction. To mitigate all such artifacts induced by low OCT signal, the speckle decorrelation is typically weighted by the corresponding OCT signal, thereby imposing firm limits on the imaging depth and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR).…”

Section: Due Tomentioning

confidence: 99%

Jones matrix‐based speckle‐decorrelation angiography using polarization‐sensitive optical coherence tomography

Gong

Wang

et al. 2020

Journal of Biophotonics

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We show that polarization‐sensitive optical coherence tomography angiography (PS‐OCTA) based on full Jones matrix assessment of speckle decorrelation offers improved contrast and depth of vessel imaging over conventional OCTA. We determine how best to combine the individual Jones matrix elements and compare the resulting image quality to that of a conventional OCT scanner by co‐locating and imaging the same skin locations with closely matched scanning setups. Vessel projection images from finger and forearm skin demonstrate the benefits of Jones matrix‐based PS‐OCTA. Our study provides a promising starting point and a useful reference for future pre‐clinical and clinical applications of Jones matrix‐based PS‐OCTA.

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Section: Due Tomentioning

confidence: 99%

Jones matrix‐based speckle‐decorrelation angiography using polarization‐sensitive optical coherence tomography

Gong

Wang

et al. 2020

Journal of Biophotonics

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“…Anisotropic crystals exhibiting optical birefringence are the fundamental building blocks of these bulk components . With the advancement of nano‐optics in the quantum era, miniaturization and integration of these phase retardation components become imperative . In analogy with their bulk counterparts which introduce path difference between orthogonally polarized light through optical birefringence, the integrated optical phase retardation elements import path difference between orthogonally polarized guided modes via the modal birefringence of the waveguides .…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Tunable Modal Birefringence in a Low‐Loss Van Der Waals Waveguide

Chen

et al. 2019

Advanced Materials

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path difference between orthogonally polarized guided modes via the modal birefringence of the waveguides. [8] Unlike the bulk birefringence which is predefined by the material, the modal birefringence of waveguides are tunable with constituent materials and waveguide geometry. [9] However in practice the manufacture of integrated phase retarders with designed modal birefringence is particularly challenging because of their stringent fabrication tolerance. [10] Therefore, new materials allowing layer-by-layer control and fine mechanical processing are highly demanded.Due to the difference between their interlayer and intralayer bonding strengths, van der Waals (vdW) crystals are both mechanically and optically anisotropic. [11,12] In light of this intrinsic outof-plane bi-anisotropy, vdW crystals are promising materials for the phase retardation applications in integrated optical circuits: the mechanical anisotropy permits the precise layer-by-layer manufacturing of the waveguide structure while the optical anisotropy provides one more degree of freedom to control its modal birefringence. vdW crystals with hyperbolic optical responses such as hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) [13,14] and α-phase molybdenum trioxide (α-MoO 3 ) [15,16] have been demonstrated to support highly confined phonon polaritons in the mid-infrared (MIR) frequency range. However, these polaritonic modes are inherently inadequate for the integrated phase retardation applications (polariton-assisted polarization control of far-field light with metasurfaces made of vdW materials is possible [17] ), as a result of their inevitable transmission loss (imposed by the Kramers-Kronig relationships between dispersion and dissipation [18,19] ) and the absence of transverseelectric (TE) polarized modes. [20,21] An alternative way is to resort to vdW crystals with elliptic anisotropy at frequencies far away from any resonant absorption bands. In such case, the imaginary parts of the permittivity tensor are usually negligible and result in positive real parts. [22] The near-zero imaginary parts of permittivity guarantee the low-loss transmission of the supported waveguide modes, while the positive real parts allow the co-occurrence of TE and transverse-magnetic (TM) polarized modes. Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are expected to exhibit elliptic light dispersion in a broad frequency range (note that h-BN is also elliptically anisotropic out of its Reststrahlen bands, the reason TMDs are better for our proposed applications will be discussed at a later stage); [23] van der Waals (vdW) crystals are promising candidates for integrated phase retardation applications due to their large optical birefringence. Among the two major types of vdW materials, the hyperbolic vdW crystals are inherently inadequate for optical retardation applications since the supported polaritonic modes are exclusively transverse-magnetic (TM) polarized and relatively lossy. Elliptic vdW crystals, on the other hand, represent a superior choice. For example, molybdenum disulfide (...

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“…In previous experiments, we observed that the polarization state of backscattered or reflected light, when measured through identical illumination and detection paths, frequently evolved through the employed input polarization state but with reversed handedness, corresponding to the input state mirrored by the horizontal plane of the Poincaré sphere [81]. Earlier investigations of the polarization properties of single mode fibers reported on aspects of the polarization mirror state [82][83][84]], yet without elucidating its manifestation.…”

Section: Observation Of the Polarization Mirror Statementioning

confidence: 98%

Improving optical coherence tomography theories and techniques for advanced performance and reduced cost

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Optical coherence tomography (OCT) has been developed as a high-resolution three-dimensional imaging technique for clinical diagnosis. This thesis proposes several theoretical discoveries and technical improvements to the current OCT systems aiming to drastically reduce system costs while achieving the state-of-theart performance. Polarization-sensitive OCT (PS-OCT) is a functional extension of conventional OCT which offers the depth-resolved birefringence imaging capability. To resolve local retardation in tissue samples, the current PS-OCT system employs two multiplexed polarization states to illuminate the sample under investigation and detects the backscattered light with two detection channels. We observed that the polarization state of light after round-trip propagation through a birefringent medium frequently aligns with the employed input polarization state but "mirrored" by the horizontal plane of the Poincaré sphere. We explore the predisposition for this mirror state and demonstrate how it constrains the evolution of polarization states as a function of the round-trip depth into weakly scattering birefringent samples, as measured with PS-OCT. The constraint enables measurements of depth-resolved sample birefringence with PS-OCT using only one input polarization state, which offers a critical simplification and cost reduction compared to the use of multiple input states. We demonstrated the capability of polarization mirror state in local birefringence restoration with birefringent phantom imaging and swine retina imaging ex vivo. If we take transpose for both sides of the Jones transmission equation of a PS-OCT system with two input states and two detection channels, the mirror state constraint still holds while the input and output states exhibit interchangeability, which implies that depth-resolved birefringence imaging is possible with only one detection channel, if the sample is illuminated with two orthogonal polarization xiii Summary xiv states. Considering the high cost of spectrometers and the difficulty of pixel alignment between two detection channels, the transposed mirror state constraint helps to cut the cost and complexity of spectral domain PS-OCT system. Inspired by the mirror state constraint, we realized that the polarization states of detected sample light, after propagating through a stochastically moving reciprocal optical path, would not distribute evenly on the Poincaré sphere, but tend to aggregate around the mirror state. This can be used to solve a long-standing problem that the detected interferograms of fiber-based OCT suffer from the fringe attenuation effect due to the polarization state mismatch between the light from the two interference arms which results in sensitivity deterioration and intensity fluctuation. This problem was conventionally solved by expensive polarization diverse detection. The polarization mirror states implies the existence of an optimal polarization state for the reference light. If the reference light is aligned with the polarization mirror state ...

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Polarization management to mitigate misalignment-induced fringe fading in fiber-based optical coherence tomography

Cited by 13 publications

References 14 publications

Jones matrix‐based speckle‐decorrelation angiography using polarization‐sensitive optical coherence tomography

Jones matrix‐based speckle‐decorrelation angiography using polarization‐sensitive optical coherence tomography

Tunable Modal Birefringence in a Low‐Loss Van Der Waals Waveguide

Improving optical coherence tomography theories and techniques for advanced performance and reduced cost

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