Abstract
We present a real-time realization of OCT-based elastographic mapping local strains and distribution of the Young’s modulus in biological tissues, which is in high demand for biomedical usage. The described variant exploits the principle of Compression Optical Coherence Elastography (C-OCE) and uses processing of phase-sensitive OCT signals. The strain is estimated by finding local axial gradients of interframe phase variations. Instead of the popular least-squares method for finding these gradients, we use the vector approach, one of its advantages being increased computational efficiency. Here, we present a modified, especially fast variant of this approach. In contrast to conventional correlation-based methods and previously used phase-resolved methods, the described method does not use any search operations or local calculations over a sliding window. Rather, it obtains local strain maps (and then elasticity maps) using several transformations represented as matrix operations applied to entire complex-valued OCT scans. We first elucidate the difference of the proposed method from the previously used correlational and phase-resolved methods and then describe the proposed method realization in a medical OCT device, in which for real-time processing, a “typical” central processor (e.g., Intel Core i7-8850H) is sufficient. Representative examples of on-flight obtained elastographic images are given. These results open prospects for broad use of affordable OCT devices for high-resolution elastographic vitalization in numerous biomedical applications, including the use in clinic.
Highlights
Optical Coherence Elastography (OCE) is one of the most actively developing extensions of Optical Coherence Tomography
We emphasize that the realization of the computationally efficient elastographic processing described in Section 2.7 has not required any supplementary computational means
The discussed elastographic imaging in OCT is generically similar to the elastographic imaging performed by ultrasound medical scanners
Summary
Optical Coherence Elastography (OCE) is one of the most actively developing extensions of Optical Coherence Tomography. Various aspects OCE and the proposed approaches to its realization (based on several variants of quasistatic and dynamic approaches) have been discussed in recent years in several reviews [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. These reviews indicate that breakthrough results in OCE have been demonstrated mostly in the last 5–6 years, the studies on strain and elasticity imaging in OCT have been carried out over two decades. By analogy with [10], in [9] it was proposed that the initial stage of OCE realization should be the reconstruction of displacements of scatterers using comparison of structural
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