Optical Coherence Tomography: Technical Aspects - Biomedical Optical Imaging Technologies: Design and Applications - page 161

Chapter 5
Optical Coherence Tomography:
Technical Aspects

Hrebesh M. Subhash and Ruikang K. Wang

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a high-resolution, noninvasive, 3D imaging
technique with great potential in both clinical and fundamental research applications
in many areas. Owing to its exceptionally high spatial resolution and velocity
sensitivity, the functional extension of OCT techniques can simultaneously provide
tissue structure, blood perfusion, birefringence, and other physiological information
and it has great potential for basic biomedical research and clinical medicine. OCT
has the far-reaching potential to be a quantitative imaging technique that could
impact many, as yet unexplored, areas and should therefore be considered a vital
measurement tool. In this chapter, we will first discuss the principle of operation
and then the practical aspects of the OCT system; we will also provide detailed
discussion on different OCT schemes and its functional extensions.

5.1 Introduction

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a novel, noninvasive, optical imaging
modality based on low-coherence interferometry. It was first conceived in 1990 by
Dr. Naohiro Tanno, a professor at Yamagata University [ 1 , 2 ] and then perfected
in 1991 by Massachusetts Institute of Technology team headed by Prof. James
Fujimoto [ 3 ]. OCT enables the noninvasive, noncontact imaging of cross-sectional
structures in biological tissues and materials with high resolution. In principle,
OCT is an optical analogue to clinical ultrasound. In OCT, the temporally gated

M.S. Hrebesh ( )
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR
97239, USA
e-mail: [e-mail]
R.K. Wang
Department of Bioengineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA