Abstract
Optical coherence tomography has become an important imaging technology in cardiology and ophthalmology, with other applications under investigations. Major advances in optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging are likely to occur through a quantum field approach to the technology. In this paper, which is the first part in a series on the topic, the quantum basis of OCT first order correlations is expressed in terms of full field quantization. Specifically first order correlations are treated as the linear sum of single photon interferences along indistinguishable paths. Photons and the electromagnetic (EM) field are described in terms of quantum harmonic oscillators. While the author feels the study of quantum second order correlations will lead to greater paradigm shifts in the field, addressed in part II, advances from the study of quantum first order correlations are given. In particular, ranging errors are discussed (with remedies) from vacuum fluctuations through the detector port, photon counting errors, and position probability amplitude uncertainty. In addition, the principles of quantum field theory and first order correlations are needed for studying second order correlations in part II.
Highlights
Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a micron scale ranging technology based on low coherence interferometry (LCI) that has found an important role in medical diagnostics
Quantum noise sources are explored in OCT, primarily from vacuum fluctuation and photon count errors (PCE), which can be treated in the same context of first order correlations
As a building block for both the remainder of the paper and subsequent work, we will demonstrate that the classical OCT intensity interference eqn (35), autocorrelation function, and Gaussian autocorrelation function can be reproduced by the accumulation of single photon interferences alone
Summary
ME Brezinski1,2,3,4,* 1Center for Optics and Modern Physics, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA, USA 2Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA 3School of Osteopathic Medicine, University of New England, Biddeford, ME, USA 4Department of Electrical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
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