Extraction of the Attenuation Coefficient from Optical Coherence Tomography Data

Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is an interferometric medical imaging technique that acquires depth information from a biological sample. For a single point on the surface, OCT records the amount of light reflected from each depth; one line of information is called an A-scan. The amount of light reflected back is a function of a physical parameter called the attenuation coefficient, denoted by μ. The attenuation coefficient μ varies within the sample, and so it is a function of spatial location. An image can be constructed from a collection of A-scans generated by translating the source; each A-scan forms a single column of the image. Studies have shown that quantifying μ is relevant for many medical applications [SGR10, BBF12, LGI07, CBF10, GML14, YWB11, SVBL12]; the goal of this project is to extract μ from OCT data. We have combined the models of Vermeer et al. [VMW13] and Faber et al. [FMAL04] into the following model for the intensity of light recorded in an A-scan as a function of depth: