We propose a maximum a-posteriori (MAP) intensity estimator to improve the image contrast of polarization diversity (PD)-OCT imaging to achieve high contrast polarization-artifact-free images. The MAP estimator compensates for the inevitable reduction of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in PD-OCT caused by the splitting of power into two polarization detection channels. It also has low noise-offset in low intensity regions such as the vitreous. This method is applied to posterior eye images, and shows high-contrast, polarization-artifact-free images. This method also enables attenuation coefficient imaging with finer differentiation of attenuation levels.

Date Published: 17 February 2017
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 10053, Optical Coherence Tomography and Coherence Domain Optical Methods in Biomedicine XXI, 100532D (17 February 2017); doi: 10.1117/12.2250517

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 10053:
Optical Coherence Tomography and Coherence Domain Optical Methods in Biomedicine XXI
James G. Fujimoto; Joseph A. Izatt; Valery V. Tuchin, Editor(s)