Optical coherence tomography (oct) system with improved motion contrast

Non-transitory, tangible, computer-readable storage media containing a program of instructions that causes a computer system running the program of instructions to function as an optical coherence tomography (OCT) system, including to:

• scan a physical object, which has a surface and a depth, with a beam of light that has a beam width and a direction;
• acquire OCT signals from the scan;
• form at least one B-scan cluster set using the acquired OCT signals such that:
• each B-scan cluster set includes at least two B-scan clusters;
• each B-scan cluster includes at least two B-scans;
• the B-scans within each B-scan cluster set are parallel to one another and parallel to the direction of the beam of light;
• each B-scan, each B-scan cluster, and each B-scan cluster set are formed at a different time than all other B-scans, B-scan clusters, and B-scan cluster sets, respectively;
• each B-scan within each B-scan cluster is separated from any next formed B-scan within that B-scan cluster by a distance (“intra-cluster distance”) in the range of 0 to half of the beam width;
• and
• the last formed B-scan within each B-scan cluster is separated from the first formed B-scan within any next formed B-scan cluster (“inter-cluster distance”) by at least one micrometer;
• use all or a fraction of the B-scans within each B-scan cluster set to calculate OCT motion contrast for each B-scan cluster set;
• and
• register the calculated OCT motion contrast as the OCT motion contrast of one of the B-scan clusters within each B-scan cluster set.