High-sensitivity determination of birefringence in turbid media with enhanced polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography
- 1 March 2005
- journal article
- Published by Optica Publishing Group in Journal of the Optical Society of America A
- Vol. 22 (3), 552-560
- https://doi.org/10.1364/josaa.22.000552
Abstract
Polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography provides high-resolution cross-sectional characterization of birefringence in turbid media. Weakly birefringent biological tissues such as the retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) require advanced speckle noise reduction for high-sensitivity measurement of form birefringence. We present a novel method for high-sensitivity birefringence quantification by using enhanced polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography (EPS-OCT) and introduce the polarimetric signal-to-noise ratio, a mathematical tool for analyzing speckle noise in polarimetry. Multiple incident polarization states and nonlinear fitting of normalized Stokes vectors allow determination of retardation with ±1° uncertainty with invariance to unknown unitary polarization transformations. Results from a weakly birefringent turbid film and in vivo primate RNFL are presented. In addition, we discuss the potential of EPS-OCT for noninvasive quantification of intracellular filamentous nanostructures, such as neurotubules in the RNFL that are lost during the progression of glaucoma.Keywords
This publication has 19 references indexed in Scilit:
- Jones-matrix imaging of biological tissues with quadruple-channel optical coherence tomographyJournal of Biomedical Optics, 2002
- Measurement and imaging of birefringence and optic axis orientation by phase resolved polarization sensitive optical coherence tomographyOptics Express, 2001
- In vivo burn depth determination by high-speed fiber-based polarization sensitive optical coherence tomographyJournal of Biomedical Optics, 2001
- Speckle in Optical Coherence TomographyJournal of Biomedical Optics, 1999
- Statistics of Stokes variables for correlated Gaussian fieldsPhysical Review E, 1994
- Vector statistics of correlated Gaussian fieldsPhysical Review E, 1993
- Optical Coherence TomographyScience, 1991
- Experimental Investigation of the First-order Statistics of Stokes Parameters in Speckle FieldsOptica Acta: International Journal of Optics, 1982
- First-order Statistics of Stokes Parameters in Speckle FieldsOptica Acta: International Journal of Optics, 1981
- Some fundamental properties of speckle*Journal of the Optical Society of America, 1976