Summary

FDOCT is an optical imaging modality that is suitable for fast imaging of thin biological specimens (thickness of the order of a few millimeters, resolution of the order of a few micrometers). The conventional reconstruction techniques give rise to some objectionable artifacts, which limit the efficiency of the modality. We have developed new techniques for artifact-free, high-fidelity tomogram reconstruction in FDOCT.

Main Contribution

The key contributions of our work are: 1) the development of a new nonlinear, noniterative technique that significantly suppresses the autocorrelation artifacts; and 2) a new method to acquire data and to perform reconstruction without complex-conjugate ambiguity. The first technique is based on a cepstrum approach for tomogram reconstruction and the second one employs a combination of Hilbert and Fourier transforms. The theoretical aspects of the two techniques have been investigated and extensive validation on synthesized as well as real-world experimental data has been carried out. Our investigations showed that the proposed techniques offer a significant improvement in reconstruction quality. The techniques are also quite fast; the associated computational complexity is comparable to that of the conventional Fourier-transform technique.