Polarization sensitive optical coherence tomography – a review [Invited]

Abstract

Abstract:Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is now a well-established modality for highresolution cross-sectional and three-dimensional imaging of transparent and translucent samples and tissues. Conventional, intensity based OCT, however, does not provide a tissuespecific contrast, causing an ambiguity with image interpretation in several cases. Polarization sensitive (PS) OCT draws advantage from the fact that several materials and tissues can change the light's polarization state, adding an additional contrast channel and providing quantitative information. In this paper, we review basic and advanced methods of PS-OCT and demonstrate its use in selected biomedical applications. Drexler, and J. G. Fujimoto, eds. (Springer, Cham, 2015), pp. 1137-1162. 6. J. F. de Boer and T. E. Milner, "Review of polarization sensitive optical coherence tomography and Stokes vector determination," J. Biomed. Opt. 7(3), 359-371 (2002). 7. M. Pircher, C. K. Hitzenberger, and U. Schmidt-Erfurth, "Polarization Sensitive Optical Coherence Tomography in the Human Eye," Prog. Retin. Eye Res. 30(6), 431-451 (2011). 8. D. Stifter, "Beyond biomedicine: a review of alternative applications and developments for optical coherence tomography," Appl. Phys. B 88(3), 337-357 (2007). 9. R. C. Jones, "A new calculus for the treatment of optical systems I. Description and discussion of the calculus," J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 31(7), 488-493 (1941). 10. J. J. Gil and E. Bernabeu, "Obtainment of the polarizing and retardation parameters of a non-depolarizing optical system from the polar decomposition of its Mueller matrix," Optik (Stuttg.) 76, 67-71 (1987). 11. C. F. Bohren and D. R. Huffman, Absorption and Scattering of Light by Small Particles (Wiley Interscience, New York, NY, 1983). 12. W. A. Shurcliff and S. S. Ballard, Polarized Light (Van Nostrand, New York, 1964). 13. B. H. Park, C. Saxer, S. M. Srinivas, J. S. Nelson, and J. F. de Boer, "In vivo burn depth determination by highspeed fiber-based polarization sensitive optical coherence tomography," J. Biomed. Opt. 6(4), 474-479 (2001). 14. B. H. Park, M. C. Pierce, B. Cense, and J. F. de Boer, "Real-time multi-functional optical coherence tomography," Opt. Express 11(7), 782-793 (2003). 15. C. E. Saxer, J. F. de Boer, B. H. Park, Y. Zhao, Z. Chen, and J. S. Nelson, "High-speed fiber based polarizationsensitive optical coherence tomography of in vivo human skin," Opt. Lett. 25(18), 1355-1357 (2000). Rylander, "Polarization sensitive optical coherence tomography of the rabbit eye," IEEE J. Sel. Top. Quantum Electron. 5(4), 1159-1167 (1999 Schmidt-Erfurth, and S. Sacu, "Retinal pigment epithelial features in central serous chorioretinopathy identified by polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography," Invest. Ophthalmol. Vis. Sci. 57(4), 1595-1603 (2016). 131. C. Schütze, C. Ahlers, M. Pircher, B. Baumann, E. Götzinger, F. Prager, G. Matt, S. Sacu, C. K. Hitzenberger, and U. Schmidt-Erfurth, "Morphologic characteristics of idiopathic juxtafoveal telangiectasia using spectraldomain and po...

Detection of carious lesions utilizing depolarization imaging by polarization sensitive optical coherence tomography

“…This includes polarization sensitive imaging and the consequent measurement of depthresolved birefringence, which until now has been applied in many biomedical as well as nonmedical fields. 8,9 In terms of hard dental tissue and caries detection, first polarization sensitive OCT (PS-OCT) measurements confirmed the birefringent properties of enamel and dentin, 4,10 and it was determined that demineralization, accompanying carious infections, results in depolarization of light. 11 Since then, several studies have shown the potential of PS-OCT to observe the internal structure and the remineralization of lesions, as well as an early detection of variously located caries.…”

“…As the underlying concept of polarization, Jones and Stokes formalisms, and image formation in conventional as well as PS-OCT with circularly polarized incident light on the sample and the presented detection scheme is widely described and was recently summarized by de Boer et al, 9 the image formation from the spectra will be outlined here in brief.…”

“…The DOPU algorithm, therefore, averages the Stokes components over adjacent speckles, and the underlying polarization scrambling results in a decreased DOP in the evaluation window. Based on DOPU, several improvements concerning its noise sensitivity, orientation dependency, and evaluation kernel size have been proposed 9,[17][18][19][20] and enhance depolarization imaging as a powerful tool for several biomedical applications.…”

In vivo imaging of human oral hard and soft tissues by polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography

“…[10][11][12] An additional relevant parameter, the degree of polarization uniformity (DOPU), is based on averaged Stokes vector elements and proposed for imaging and segmentation of local variations of the polarization state 13,14 also known as depolarization or rather polarization scrambling as an intrinsic tissue property. 15 Equipped with these advancements, PS OCT is increasingly applied for medical diagnosis mainly in ophthalmology 9,[16][17][18] followed by dentistry, 19,20 cardiology, 6,21,22 and dermatology [23][24][25] with regard to the frequency of publications over the last years. 9 Although PS OCT has successfully shown to provide additional contrast for distinguishing pathological lesions from normal tissues, it has not been used much in the oral cavity.…”

Introduction to the feature issue on the 25 year anniversary of optical coherence tomography

“…As discussed in the following cited Invited Review and Invited Research articles in this issue, remarkable strides have since been made in OCT technology encompassing novel light sources [2], imaging system architectures [3,4], and sample/patient interface technologies including endoscopic [5], catheter-based [6], intra-operative [7], adaptive-optic [8][9][10], computational [11] and microscope-based [12] implementations. Functional extensions of OCT have been developed featuring polarization-based [13], Doppler [14], elastographic [15], tractographic [16], spectroscopic [17,18] multi-modal [19] and angiographic [8,20,21] contrast, the latter of which has taken on particular current excitement and topically comprises the plurality of articles published in this Issue. Clinical applications of OCT have been developed in dozens of medical specialties, led by its most mature applications in ophthalmology and cardiology, where OCT has become a clinical standard of care and is now performed in an estimated 30 million OCT imaging procedures per year [22].…”