Optical coherence tomography for visualizing transient strains and measuring large deformations in laser-induced tissue reshaping

Abstract

In the context of the development of emerging laser-assisted thermo-mechanical technologies for non-destructive reshaping of avascular collagenous tissues (cartilages and cornea), we report the first application of phase-sensitive optical coherence tomography (OCT) for visualizing transient strains involving supra-wavelength inter-frame displacements of scatterers. Usually phase-sensitive OCT assumes the visualization of sub-pixel and even sub-wavelength displacements of scatterers and fairly small strains (say, <10−3), which conventionally implies the necessity of averaging for enhancing the effective signal-to-noise ratio and, correspondingly, the application of small-amplitude actuators producing periodic deformations. The original approach used here allows for direct estimation of elevated strains ~10−2 (close to onset of intense speckle blinking) obviating the necessity of averaging and phase unwrapping for supra-wavelength inter-frame displacements. We demonstrate the possibility of mapping aperiodic thermally-induced transient strains with resultant large deformations on order of tens per cent. Such strains are typical in laser tissue reshaping, but are far beyond the range of conventionally discussed OCT-based strain mapping.