ABSTRACT
The emergence of optical coherence tomography (OCT) offers a viable solution for three dimensional (3D) reconstruction of biological tissues with high spatiotemporal resolution. The brain is a highly heterogeneous network with billions of neurons communicating through trillions of synaptic connections. This chapter reviews the basics of OCT techniques and the structural brain imaging and mapping studies using multiple OCT contrasts. OCT, analogous to ultrasound imaging, makes use of an optical interferometry to provide cross-sectional and 3D images of tissue microstructures up to a few millimeters of depth. Polarization-sensitive OCT (PS-OCT) makes use of light polarization to produce additional contrasts in OCT imaging. It targets the birefringent tissues. The OCT and PS-OCT systems can be implemented with bulk or fiber optics. The bulk system has the advantages of simple optical component and computationally inexpensive algorithms, and the polarization states are stably kept in air.
