Gabor-based fusion technique for Optical Coherence Microscopy

Jannick P Rolland,Kevin P Thompson,Panomsak Meemon,Supraja Murali,Kye-Sung Lee

doi:10.1364/oe.18.003632

Abstract

We recently reported on an Optical Coherence Microscopy technique, whose innovation intrinsically builds on a recently reported - 2 microm invariant lateral resolution by design throughout a 2 mm cubic full-field of view - liquid-lens-based dynamic focusing optical probe [Murali et al., Optics Letters 34, 145-147, 2009]. We shall report in this paper on the image acquisition enabled by this optical probe when combined with an automatic data fusion method developed and described here to produce an in-focus high resolution image throughout the imaging depth of the sample. An African frog tadpole (Xenopus laevis) was imaged with the novel probe and the Gabor-based fusion technique, demonstrating subcellular resolution in a 0.5 mm (lateral) x 0.5 mm (axial) without the need, for the first time, for x-y translation stages, depth scanning, high-cost adaptive optics, or manual intervention. In vivo images of human skin are also presented.

Highlights

Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is a technology capable of depth sectioning of biological tissue at micrometer scale resolution
We recently reported on an Optical Coherence Microscopy technique, whose innovation intrinsically builds on a recently reported - 2 μm invariant lateral resolution by design throughout a 2 mm cubic full-field of view - liquid-lens-based dynamic focusing optical probe [Murali et al, Optics Letters 34, 145-147, 2009]
The high lateral resolution throughout the depth of the sample was achieved by increasing the numerical aperture (NA) of the imaging optics and refocusing into the sample with depth to overcome the decrease in depth of focus (DOF) that varies as the inverse square of the NA [6]

Summary

Introduction

Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is a technology capable of depth sectioning of biological tissue at micrometer scale resolution. The first demonstration of high lateral resolution associated with the terminology of Optical Coherence Microscopy emerged in 1994 [4]. Ultrahigh-resolution OCT was first demonstrated in vivo in 1999 with simultaneously up to ~1 μm axial resolution in tissue and 3 μm lateral resolution [5]. In [5] and [6], the imaging was performed with Time-Domain OCT (TD-OCT) using scanning stages. An open challenge has been to demonstrate high lateral resolution without scanning stages, because it is only when we can move the technology off the scanning stages that we open a path for in vivo clinical applications seeking histology grade image quality

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion