Speckle-Free Coherence Tomography of Turbid Media

TL;DR

Speckle-Free OCT (SFOCT) is a novel light manipulation method that completely removes speckle noise from OCT images of turbid media, enhancing the visibility of minute structures without losing resolution.

Contribution

This paper introduces SFOCT, a new technique that eliminates speckle noise in OCT imaging through light manipulation, improving diagnostic detail in biomedical applications.

Findings

Successfully visualized small structures in mouse cornea and skin.

Achieved speckle noise removal without resolution loss.

Enhanced detection of early pathological features.

Abstract

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a powerful biomedical imaging technology that relies on the coherent detection of backscattered light to image tissue morphology in vivo. As a consequence, OCT is susceptible to coherent noise (speckle noise), which imposes significant limitations on its diagnostic capabilities. Here we show a method based purely on light manipulation that is able to entirely remove the speckle noise originating from turbid samples without any compromise in resolution. We refer to this method as Speckle-Free OCT (SFOCT). Using SFOCT, we succeeded in revealing small structures that are otherwise hidden by speckle noise when using conventional OCT, including the inner stromal structure of a live mouse cornea, the fine structures inside the mouse pinna, sweat ducts, and Meissners corpuscle in the human fingertip skin. SFOCT has the potential to markedly increase OCTs diagnostic capabilities of various human diseases by revealing minute features that correlate with early pathology.