Professor Stephen Boppart and researchers from the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology have developed a method and apparatus for capturing four phase shifted interference patterns for instantaneous phase sensitive optical coherence tomography. This technique is a label free imaging technique with phase, polarization and spectroscopic sensitivity, while using incoherent illumination and capturing phase-shifted images in a single camera. It can be used as a commercial imaging system for imaging biomedical and biological samples, specifically for imaging cellular dynamics. In addition, the technique can also be used as a non-invasive diagnostic tool to assess and monitor diseases that alter optically accessible tissues (e.g. melanoma, skin diseases. This technique improves light-use efficiency, robustness and increases information content that can be extracted from images.
Benefit
Phase sensitive optical coherence tomographyis an imaging technique with phase, polarization and spectroscopic sensitivity, while using incoherent illumination and capturing phase-shifted images in single camera.
Phase sensitive optical coherence tomography improves light-use efficiency, robustness and increases information content that can be extracted from images.
Market Application
This technique can be used as a commercial imaging system for imaging biomedical and biological samples, such as cells or tissues.
Figure 1. Examples of imaging applications. Images a and c (insets zoomed in b and d) show an average amplitude, while b and c show: Dynamic OCM image calculated as variance of sequence of 50 phase images