Optical coherence tomography systems and methods
AssigneeThe Research Foundation of State University of New York
InventorYingtian Pan
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Abstract
In general, in one aspect, the invention features a method that includes using an optical coherence tomography system to acquire a plurality of frames of a sample where each frame includes optical information about the composition of the sample through a section of the sample. The method further includes averaging over two or more of the frames to provide an image of the section of the sample where successive frames of the two or more frames are acquired with a time lapse of 0.05-0.7 seconds. Embodiments of the method may have unique advantages for endoscopic subcellular imaging. For example, they can enable subcellular imaging with low-NA optics (e.g., NA=0.25 or less) while providing morphological imaging of the underlying tissue up to 0.6 mm without focal tracking.
Claims26
A method, comprising:
- obtaining a tissue sample exhibiting intracellular motion;
- using an optical coherence tomography system to acquire a plurality of frames of the tissue sample, each frame comprising optical information about the composition of the sample through a section of the sample acquired over an acquisition interval t;
- and
- selecting a time lapse interval for averaging over at least two of the frames, such that the time lapse τ between the at least two frames is selected based on an extent of the intracellular motion of the tissue sample;
- wherein τ is sufficiently long to reduce speckle noise in images acquired using the optical coherence tomography system due to the intracellular motion, and sufficiently short to reduce image resolution deterioration in images acquired using the optical coherence tomography system;
- and
- averaging over the at least two frames to provide an image of the section of the sample.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.