PROCEEDINGS ARTICLE | August 30, 2017
Proc. SPIE. 10407, Polarization Science and Remote Sensing VIII
KEYWORDS: Mirrors, Biomedical optics, Coherence (optics), Polarization, Tissues, Optical coherence tomography, Manufacturing, In vivo imaging, Tissue optics, Statistical modeling
The polarization-sensitive spectral domain optical coherence tomography (PSOCT) has the advantages of being able to
measure the polarization properties of samples, such as phase-retardation, diattenuation, depolarization, and optical axis
orientation, providing a contrast to identify the diseased area and normal area in tissues in PSOCT images.
Conventionally, the sample arm of PSOCT is fixed on the stage where biomedical tissues or models is placed, and the
OCT images is acquired by scanning with a galvanometer-based mirror. To be applied in the practical diagnosis, a
promising way is to design a hand-held device. To this end, it is required that probe is assembled with a small volume to
allow for comprehensively imaging large tissues areas at a microscopic scale, and is available to move on different
samples to be acquired quickly with negligible motion artifacts. Meanwhile, the probe should be manufactured wih well
stability to avoid system jitter error while it is used to detect the biological tissues in vivo. In this work, a design of a
hand-hold fiber-based PSOCT is described. The device is of the size of 10 cm (length) × 8 cm (width) × 6 cm (height).
Both the axial resolution and the imaging depth of the system are measured and were approximately 7 μm and 2.5 mm in
air, respectively, which are in good agreement with the theoretical predictions. The A-scan rate of the system is 70 kHz.
The structure is compact and all the components are fixed on the shell to reduce the motion artifact, resulting in a great
stability on measuring the tissues in vivo. The cross sectional images of ex vivo chicken breast, ex vivo pork cartilage
and in vivo forearm skin of human wolunteer are presented to demonstrate the capability of the system.
