Development of mathematical models for quantitative OCT: A review

TL;DR

This review paper discusses various mathematical models based on Maxwell's equations that describe the functioning of Optical Coherence Tomography, emphasizing the impact of modeling assumptions on simulation outcomes and real data comparison.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of different modeling approaches for OCT, highlighting the effects of assumptions on simulation and measurement accuracy.

Findings

Different modeling assumptions lead to qualitatively different simulation behaviors.

Comparison between numerical simulations and real OCT data reveals the importance of accurate modeling.

Highlighting the effects of illumination, medium, and setup assumptions on OCT modeling.

Abstract

We review mathematical models describing how Optical Coherence Tomography works. Hereby, we focus on models based on Maxwell's equations and their simplifications. We highlight especially the effects of different modeling assumptions for the incident illumination, the medium, the light propagation, and the measurement setup and illustrate the qualitatively differing behavior in numerical simulations of the OCT data and compare them with real data from OCT measurements.