ABSTRACT
Andrea Curatolo, Brendan F. Kennedy
Optical+Biomedical Engineering Laboratory (OBEL), School of Electrical, Electronic and Com-
puter Engineering, The University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, Western
Australia, Australia
David D. Sampson
Optical+Biomedical Engineering Laboratory (OBEL), School of Electrical, Electronic and Com-
puter Engineering, and Centre for Microscopy, Characterisation and Analysis, The University of
Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, Western Australia, Australia
Timothy R. Hillman
Optical+Biomedical Engineering Laboratory (OBEL), School of Electrical, Electronic and Com-
puter Engineering, The University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, Western
Australia 6009, Australia
6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
6.2 OCT Speckle Characteristics in the Single Scattering Regime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
6.3 OCT Speckle Statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
6.4 OCT Image Formation Using Singly Backscattered Light: Linear System Framework . . . . . 226
6.5 OCT Image Formation: Multiple Scattering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
6.6 Retrieving Information from Speckle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
6.7 Mitigation of OCT Speckle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
6.8 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a biomedical imaging modality that produces high-resolu-
tion cross-sectional images of tissues, using infrared light and low-coherence interferometry. For a
thorough discussion of OCT, please refer to Chapter 5. As OCT is a coherent modality, its images
are corrupted by speckle, giving them a grainy or mottled appearance.
