System Design and Optimization of Optical Coherence Tomography(thesis).pdf

SYSTEM DESIGN AND OPTIMIZATION
OF OPTICAL COHERENCE TOMOGRAPHY







by



AVNI CEYHUN AKCAY
. Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey 1999
. University of Central Florida, Orlando 2001




A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
in the College of Optics and Photonics
at the University of Central Florida
Orlando, Florida






Summer Term
2005






Major Professor: Jannick P. Rolland
© 2005 Avni Ceyhun Akcay






ii
ABSTRACT
Optical coherence imaging, including tomography (OCT) and microscopy (OCM), has
been a growing research field in biomedical optical imaging in the last decade. In this imaging
modality, a broadband light source, thus of short temporal coherence length, is used to perform
imaging via interferometry. A challenge in optical coherence imaging, as in any imaging system
towards biomedical diagnosis, is the quantification of image quality and optimization of the
ponents, both a primary focus of this research. We concentrated our efforts on the
optimization of the imaging system from two main standpoints: axial point spread function (PSF)
and practical steps pact low-cost solutions.

Up to recently, the criteria for the quality of a system was based on speed of imaging, sensitivity,
and particularly axial resolution estimated solely from the full-width at half-maximum (FWHM)
of the axial PSF with mon practice of assuming a Gaussian source power spectrum. As
part of our work to quantify axial resolution we first brought forth two more metrics unlike
FWHM, which accounted for side lobes in the axial PSF caused by irregularities in the shape of
the source power spectrum, such as spectral dips. Subsequently, we presented a method where
the axial PSF was significantly optimized by suppressing the side lobes occurring because o