A Review of Optical Coherence Elastography: Fundamentals, Techniques and Prospects

Real-time and non-invasive measurements of cell mechanical behaviour with optical coherence phase microscopy

“…Mechanical stimuli have been shown to have a major role in regulating stem cell behaviour, with differentiation defined as a mechanosensitive process controlled by the stiffness of the stem cell substrate (Engler et al, 2006). The mechanical behaviour of cells from the nanoscopic to macroscopic scales is known to alter (Kennedy et al, 2014a), and nanoscale features have been shown to influence cell behaviour on synthetic surfaces (E. Kim et al, 2009). There is therefore a need to investigate the mechanical behaviour of the stem cell niche as well as its response to various mechanical stimuli.…”

Thermo-elastic optical coherence tomography

“…The determination of the tissue type in OCT images usually depends on the interpretation by the image reader. More accurate tissue type contrast may be achieved by new OCT-based imaging modalities, with sensitivity to other physical parameters than scattering alone [12][13][14][15][16].…”

“…Depending on the nature of the excitation, different functional images can be reconstructed: a mechanical stimulus yields images of tissue elasticity [14,[17][18][19], while continuous-wave laser illumination provides photo-thermal deformation images [20][21][22][23][24][25]. These techniques use complex and frequently large multimodal devices, or require long integration times (in the order of milliseconds).…”

Hybrid M-mode-like OCT imaging of three-dimensional microvasculature in vivo using reference-free processing of complex valued B-scans

“…The need for increased information content in optical coherence tomography (OCT) of biological tissues has been exemplified by recent efforts to complement conventional structural images with additional contrast mechanisms, such as polarization-sensitive measurements and elastoraphic imaging [1][2][3], studies of rheological/relaxational characteristics [4,5], and microvasculature characterization [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16], as summarized in recent reviews [17,18]. Many vasculature-imaging methods detect flow via phase-resolved Doppler effects, including either detailed quantification of flow profiles (e.g.…”

“…In this context, one can point out two potentially relevant characteristic times: (1) Overall, the proposed MMLSV approach represents a hybrid method exhibiting certain features of Doppler and phase-resolved methods that compare pixel phases in individual A-scans (or use other ways to estimate Doppler frequency components, for example filtering). From the viewpoint of scanning regime, the MMLSV is close to M-mode, whereas the use of speckle variability resembles elements of Sv/Cm methods, although here the comparison is made within each dense B-scan rather than between repeated B-scans from the same position.…”