Theoretical and Experimental Study of Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) Signals Using an Analytical Transport Model

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a non-invasive low coherent interferometric technique that provides cross-sectional images of turbid media. OCT is based on the classical Michelson interferometer where the mirror of the reference arm is oscillating and the signal arm contains a biological sample. In this work, we analyzed theoretically the heterodyne optical signal adopting the so called extended Huygens-Fresnel principle (EHFP). We use simulated OCT images with known optical properties to test an algorithm developed by ourselves to recover the scattering coefficient and we recovered the scattering coefficient with a relative error less than 5% for noisy signals. In addition, we applied this algorithm to OCT images from phantoms of known optical properties; in this case curves were indistinguishable. A revision of the validity of the analytical model applied to our system should be done.