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17 September 2015 Performance analysis of optical coherence tomography in the context of a thickness estimation task
Jinxin Huang, Jianing Yao, Nick Cirucci, Trevor Ivanov, Jannick P. Rolland
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Journal of Biomedical Optics, Vol. 20, Issue 12, 121306 (September 2015). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JBO.20.12.121306
Abstract
Thickness estimation is a common task in optical coherence tomography (OCT). This study discusses and quantifies the intensity noise of three commonly used broadband sources, such as a supercontinuum source, a superluminescent diode (SLD), and a swept source. The performance of the three optical sources was evaluated for a thickness estimation task using both the fast Fourier transform (FFT) and maximum-likelihood (ML) estimators. We find that the source intensity noise has less impact on a thickness estimation task compared to the width of the axial point-spread function (PSF) and the trigger jittering noise of a swept source. Findings further show that the FFT estimator yields biased estimates, which can be as large as 10% of the thickness under test in the worst case. The ML estimator is by construction asymptotically unbiased and displays a 10× improvement in precision for both the supercontinuum and SLD sources. The ML estimator also shows the ability to estimate thickness that is at least 10× thinner compared to the FFT estimator. Finally, findings show that a supercontinuum source combined with the ML estimator enables unbiased nanometer-class thickness estimation with nanometer-scale precision.
CC BY: © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.
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Jinxin Huang, Jianing Yao, Nick Cirucci, Trevor Ivanov, and Jannick P. Rolland "Performance analysis of optical coherence tomography in the context of a thickness estimation task," Journal of Biomedical Optics 20(12), 121306 (17 September 2015). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JBO.20.12.121306
Published: 17 September 2015
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Cited by 7 scholarly publications.
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KEYWORDS
Optical coherence tomography
Point spread functions
Biological research
Sensors
Supercontinuum sources
Glasses
Fourier transforms
CHORUS Article. This article was made freely available starting 16 September 2016
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