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Recent Advances in Optical Coherence Tomography

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A special issue of Photonics (ISSN 2304-6732). This special issue belongs to the section "Biophotonics and Biomedical Optics".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 November 2022) | Viewed by 20481

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Simone Donadello

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Guest Editor

INRiM – Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica, Strada delle Cacce, 91, 10135 Torino, Italy
Interests: optics; lasers; interferometry; optical coherence tomography; ultracold gases; metrology; laser processing

Prof. Dr. Virgil-Florin Duma

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Guest Editor

1. 3OM Optomechatronics Group, Faculty of Engineering, Aurel Vlaicu University of Arad, 310130 Arad, Romania
2. Doctoral School, Polytechnic University of Timisoara, 300006 Timisoara, Romania
Interests: optomechatronics; laser systems; imaging techniques; optical coherence tomography (OCT); measuring systems; optical metrology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Dr. Chao Zhou

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Guest Editor

Department of Biomedical Engineering, Washington University in St. Louis, Campus Box 1097, One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO 63130-4899, USA
Interests: biophotonics; optical coherence tomography and microscopy; optogenetics; diagnostic imaging; developmental biology; tissue engineering

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is an important interferometric technique that has experienced fast development in the last thirty years, with its origins in white-light interferometry. In OCT, the properties of low-coherence light are exploited to obtain absolute measurements of optical distances, allowing the performance of nondestructive tomography of scattering media or surfaces with micrometric resolutions.

The capability of obtaining high-quality three-dimensional images non-intrusively has stimulated great research interest, which was initially focused on OCT in biomedical applications. Indeed, the possibility of diagnosis based on the analysis of in vivo tissue is of particularly interest, for example, in ophthalmology, cardiology, and dermatology. Nevertheless, OCT is also showing widespread potential in other branches. For example, in the last decade, its use has been demonstrated in numerous laser processing technologies, where low-coherence interferometry can be used for real-time and noncontact process monitoring.

Such a variety of applications serves as inspiration for the research and development of new OCT techniques to improve measurement performance in terms of robustness, speed, and resolution. Accordingly, OCT has been implemented following several time-domain and frequency-domain interferometric techniques. Another important direction of research consists of the development of techniques and devices that support the progress of novel OCT systems, including laser scanners, modulators, adaptive optics, and handheld probes.

This Special Issue of Photonics will focus on the recent advances in low-coherence interferometry techniques and the optimization of OCT performance in addition to its novel applications either in biomedical or other technological fields.

Dr. Simone Donadello
Prof. Dr. Virgil-Florin Duma
Dr. Chao Zhou
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Photonics is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

novel low-coherence interferometry methods
optimization and characterization of OCT
biomedical OCT applications
low-coherence interferometry in laser processing
OCT and industry
OCT in nondestructive testing (NDT)
OCT systems and devices
3D-imaging with low-coherence interferometry
OCT versus other imaging techniques
fiber sensors

Published Papers (10 papers)

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Research

Jump to: Review

17 pages, 17511 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Automatic Choroid Vascularity Index Calculation in Optical Coherence Tomography Images with Low-Contrast Sclerochoroidal Junction Using Deep Learning

by Roya Arian, Tahereh Mahmoudi, Hamid Riazi-Esfahani, Hooshang Faghihi, Ahmad Mirshahi, Fariba Ghassemi, Alireza Khodabande, Raheleh Kafieh and Elias Khalili Pour

Photonics 2023, 10(3), 234; https://doi.org/10.3390/photonics10030234 - 21 Feb 2023

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1353

Abstract

The choroidal vascularity index (CVI) is a new biomarker defined for retinal optical coherence tomography (OCT) images for measuring and evaluating the choroidal vascular structure. The CVI is the ratio of the choroidal luminal area (LA) to the total choroidal area (TCA). The automatic calculation of this index is important for ophthalmologists but has not yet been explored. In this study, we proposed a fully automated method based on deep learning for calculating the CVI in three main steps: 1—segmentation of the choroidal boundary, 2—detection of the choroidal luminal vessels, and 3—computation of the CVI. The proposed method was evaluated in complex situations such as the presence of diabetic retinopathy and pachychoroid spectrum. In pachychoroid spectrum, the choroid is thickened, and the boundary between the choroid and sclera (sclerochoroidal junction) is blurred, which makes the segmentation more challenging. The proposed method was designed based on the U-Net model, and a new loss function was proposed to overcome the segmentation problems. The vascular LA was then calculated using Niblack’s local thresholding method, and the CVI value was finally computed. The experimental results for the segmentation stage with the best-performing model and the proposed loss function used showed Dice coefficients of 0.941 and 0.936 in diabetic retinopathy and pachychoroid spectrum patients, respectively. The unsigned boundary localization errors in the presence of diabetic retinopathy were 3 and 20.7 μm for the BM boundary and sclerochoroidal junction, respectively. Similarly, the unsigned errors in the presence of pachychoroid spectrum were 21.6 and 76.2 μm for the BM and sclerochoroidal junction, respectively. The performance of the proposed method to calculate the CVI was evaluated; the Bland–Altman plot indicated an acceptable agreement between the values allocated by experts and the proposed method in the presence of diabetic retinopathy and pachychoroid spectrum. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Optical Coherence Tomography)

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17 pages, 596 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Implementing Predictive Models in Artificial Intelligence through OCT Biomarkers for Age-Related Macular Degeneration

by Serena Fragiotta, Flaminia Grassi and Solmaz Abdolrahimzadeh

Photonics 2023, 10(2), 149; https://doi.org/10.3390/photonics10020149 - 31 Jan 2023

Viewed by 1892

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) represents a growing and promising branch of computer science that is expanding the horizon of prediction, screening, and disease monitoring. The use of multimodal imaging in retinal diseases is particularly advantageous to valorize the integration of machine learning and deep learning for early diagnosis, prediction, and management of retinal disorders. In age-related macular degeneration (AMD) beyond its diagnosis and characterization, the prediction of AMD high-risk phenotypes evolving into late forms remains a critical point. The main multimodal imaging modalities adopted included color fundus photography, fundus autofluorescence, and optical coherence tomography (OCT), which represents undoubtful advantages over other methods. OCT features identified as predictors of late AMD include the morphometric evaluation of retinal layers, drusen volume and topographic distribution, reticular pseudodrusen, and hyperreflective foci quantification. The present narrative review proposes to analyze the current evidence on AI models and biomarkers identified to predict disease progression with particular attention to OCT-based features and to highlight potential perspectives for future research. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Optical Coherence Tomography)

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13 pages, 2708 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Early OCT Angiography Variations in Macular and Peripapillary Area after Uncomplicated Cataract Surgery and Correlation with Intraoperative Parameters

by Antonio Baldascino, Matteo Mario Carlà, Tomaso Caporossi, Gloria Gambini, Matteo Ripa, Giulia Grieco, Federico Giannuzzi, Umberto De Vico, Alfonso Savastano and Stanislao Rizzo

Photonics 2023, 10(1), 53; https://doi.org/10.3390/photonics10010053 - 03 Jan 2023

Viewed by 1444

Abstract

Background: We evaluated changes in both macular and peripapillary vascular parameters, evaluated by OCT angiography (OCTA), after uncomplicated cataract surgery, as well as the influence of effective phacoemulsification time (EPT) and cumulative dissipated energy (CDE). Methods: This is prospective study on 130 eyes of 65 individuals who underwent unilateral phacoemulsification, with fellow eyes data taken as control group. We collected cataract grading, EPT and CDE. Best corrected visual acuity (BCVA), superficial vessel density, deep vessel density, foveal avascular zone (FAZ) parameters and peripapillary capillary density were measured at baseline, one week and one month following surgery. Results: When compared to baseline, there was a significant increase in both superficial and deep foveal density at last follow up (from 42.9 ± 4.2 and 37.3 ± 7.4 to 45.6 ± 5.4 and 43.7 ± 9.0%, p = 0.002 and p = 0.0001, respectively). Both foveal avascular zone’s area and perimeter showed a significant decrease compared to the preoperative value (p < 0.05). On the other hand, peripapillary vascular density showed a significant increase at week one (from 49.6 ± 2.7 to 51.4 ± 4.6%, p = 0.01), which returned to preoperative values at last follow up (49.3 ± 4.0%, p = 0.95). We found no significant differences when dividing the cohort for cataract severity. Moreover, no significant effect of the EPT and CDE on vascular changes were reported. Conclusions: We found a significant increase in the vascular parameters of the macular area after cataract surgery, while peripapillary vascular density only experienced a transient increase, suggesting an adaptative metabolic mechanism in response to increased light exposure after surgery. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Optical Coherence Tomography)

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11 pages, 5367 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Fast Generative Adversarial Network for High-Fidelity Optical Coherence Tomography Image Synthesis

by Nan Ge, Yixi Liu, Xiang Xu, Xuedian Zhang and Minshan Jiang

Photonics 2022, 9(12), 944; https://doi.org/10.3390/photonics9120944 - 07 Dec 2022

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1519

Abstract

(1) Background: We present a fast generative adversarial network (GAN) for generating high-fidelity optical coherence tomography (OCT) images. (2) Methods: We propose a novel Fourier-FastGAN (FOF-GAN) to produce OCT images. To improve the image quality of the synthetic images, a new discriminator with a Fourier attention block (FAB) and a new generator with fast Fourier transform (FFT) processes were redesigned. (3) Results: We synthesized normal, diabetic macular edema (DME), and drusen images from the Kermany dataset. When training with 2800 images with 50,000 epochs, our model used only 5 h on a single RTX 2080Ti GPU. Our synthetic images are realistic to recognize the retinal layers and pathological features. The synthetic images were evaluated by a VGG16 classifier and the Fréchet inception distance (FID). The reliability of our model was also demonstrated in the few-shot learning with only 100 pictures. (4) Conclusions: Using a small computing budget and limited training data, our model exhibited good performance for generating OCT images with a 512 × 512 resolution in a few hours. Fast retinal OCT image synthesis is an aid for data augmentation medical applications of deep learning. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Optical Coherence Tomography)

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12 pages, 1960 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Rapid Method to Noninvasively Measure the Viscoelastic Properties of Synthetic Polymers Using Mechanical Vibrations and Photonics

by Frederick H. Silver, Michael Gonzalez-Mercedes and Arielle Mesica

Photonics 2022, 9(12), 925; https://doi.org/10.3390/photonics9120925 - 01 Dec 2022

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1250

Abstract

Noninvasive measurement of the viscoelastic properties of both natural and synthetic polymers is important for the analysis of implant design and performance as well as in industrial material development. In this study, we used vibrational optical coherence tomography (VOCT) to compare the elastic and viscoelastic properties of silicone polymers with standard tensile stress–strain measurements. VOCT uses acoustic vibrations and infrared light to measure the resonant frequency of viscoelastic materials. The elastic modulus was calculated from the in-phase deformation of the material at fixed frequencies using an empirical calibration curve. Viscous loss was measured after pulsing the samples based on the ratio of mechanovibrational peak widths to heights. The results showed that the optimal cure time and modulus values obtained using VOCT were like those obtained using conventional tensile testing. VOCT could capture results that were comparable to conventional testing while not destroying the material, suggesting its usefulness for in vivo and in situ measurements as well as for early quality control environments during end-use application and fabrication experiments. We conclude that VOCT is a new technique that is comparable to conventional testing for noninvasively and nondestructively measuring the viscoelastic properties of polymers. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Optical Coherence Tomography)

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14 pages, 2701 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Noise Reduction of OCT Images Based on the External Patch Prior Guided Internal Clustering and Morphological Analysis

by Yingwei Fan, Yangxi Li, Tianxin Gao and Xiaoying Tang

Photonics 2022, 9(8), 543; https://doi.org/10.3390/photonics9080543 - 03 Aug 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1974

Abstract

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is widely used in biomedical imaging. However, noise severely affects diagnosing and identifying diseased tissues on OCT images. Here, a noise reduction method based on the external patch prior guided internal clustering and morphological analysis (E2PGICMA) is developed to remove the noise of OCT images. The external patch prior guided internal clustering algorithm is used to reduce speckle noise. The morphological analysis algorithm is employed to the background for contrast enhancement. OCT images of in vivo normal skin tissues were analyzed to remove noise using the proposed method. The estimated standard deviations of the noise were chosen as different values for evaluating the quantitative metrics. The visual quality improvement includes more textures and fine detail preservation. The denoising effects of different methods were compared. Then, quantitative and qualitative evaluations of this proposed method were conducted. The results demonstrated that the SNR, PSNR, and XCOR were higher than those of the other noise-reduction methods, reaching 15.05 dB, 27.48 dB, and 0.9959, respectively. Furthermore, the presented method’s noise reduction ratio (NRR) reached 0.8999. This proposed method can efficiently remove the background and speckle noise. Improving the proposed noise reduction method would outperform existing state-of-the-art OCT despeckling methods. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Optical Coherence Tomography)

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9 pages, 12743 KiB

Open AccessCommunication

Dispersion Measurement with Optical Computing Optical Coherence Tomography

by Wenxin Zhang, Zhengyu Chen, Xiao Zhang, Chengming Wang, Bin He, Ning Liu, Yangkang Wu, Yuxiu Tao, Ning Zhang and Ping Xue

Photonics 2022, 9(1), 48; https://doi.org/10.3390/photonics9010048 - 17 Jan 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2529

Abstract

We propose a novel technique to measure fiber dispersion without any derivative operation and index measurement. Based on the relationship between the dispersion and the signal in optical computing optical coherence tomography, dispersion can be deduced with high accuracy from optical computing OCT signal position and resolution. The group velocity dispersion and third order dispersion of single mode fiber and dispersion compensating fiber with lengths of 10 m–10 km are measured to be in good consistence with the nominal value. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Optical Coherence Tomography)

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Review

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18 pages, 5280 KiB

Open AccessReview

Current Applications and New Perspectives in Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) Coronary Atherosclerotic Plaque Assessment: From PCI Optimization to Pharmacological Treatment Guidance

by Michele Mattia Viscusi, Ylenia La Porta, Giuseppe Migliaro, Gian Marco Gargano, Annunziata Nusca, Laura Gatto, Simone Budassi, Luca Paolucci, Fabio Mangiacapra, Elisabetta Ricottini, Rosetta Melfi, Raffaele Rinaldi, Francesco Prati, Gian Paolo Ussia and Francesco Grigioni

Photonics 2023, 10(2), 158; https://doi.org/10.3390/photonics10020158 - 02 Feb 2023

Viewed by 1899

Abstract

Since its ability to precisely characterized atherosclerotic plaque phenotypes, to tailor stent implantation, as well as to guide both complex percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI) and invasive diagnostic work-ups (e.g., spontaneous coronary dissections or myocardial infarction with non-obstructive arteries), the adoption of optical coherence tomography (OCT) was raised in the past decades in order to provide complementary information to the traditional angiography and to overcome its limitations. However, the impact of OCT on daily clinical practice is currently modest, firstly because of the lack of both standardized algorithms of PCI guidance and data from prospective clinical trials. Therefore, the aim of our narrative review is to provide a comprehensive overview of the basic OCT interpretation, to summarize the evidence supporting the OCT guidance procedures and applications, to discuss its current limitations, and to highlight the knowledge gaps that need to be filled with more robust evidence. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Optical Coherence Tomography)

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30 pages, 6652 KiB

Open AccessReview

Extracting Morphological and Sub-Resolution Features from Optical Coherence Tomography Images, a Review with Applications in Cancer Diagnosis

by Christos Photiou, Michalis Kassinopoulos and Costas Pitris

Photonics 2023, 10(1), 51; https://doi.org/10.3390/photonics10010051 - 03 Jan 2023

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2312

Abstract

Before they become invasive, early cancer cells exhibit specific and characteristic changes that are routinely used by a histopathologist for diagnosis. Currently, these early abnormalities are only detectable ex vivo by histopathology or, non-invasively and in vivo, by optical modalities that have not been clinically implemented due to their complexity and their limited penetration in tissues. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a noninvasive medical imaging technology with increasing clinical applications in areas such as ophthalmology, cardiology, gastroenterology, etc. In addition to imaging the tissue micro-structure, OCT can also provide additional information, describing the constituents and state of the cellular components of the tissue. Estimates of the nuclear size, sub-cellular morphological variations, dispersion and index of refraction can be extracted from the OCT images and can serve as diagnostically useful biomarkers. Moreover, the development of fully automated algorithms for tissue segmentation and feature extraction and the application of machine learning, can further enhance the clinical potential of OCT. When fully exploited, OCT has the potential to lead to accurate and sensitive, image-derived, biomarkers for disease diagnosis and treatment monitoring of cancer. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Optical Coherence Tomography)

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26 pages, 4599 KiB

Open AccessEditor’s ChoiceReview

Line Field Optical Coherence Tomography

by Samuel Lawman, Zijian Zhang, Yao-Chun Shen and Yalin Zheng

Photonics 2022, 9(12), 946; https://doi.org/10.3390/photonics9120946 - 07 Dec 2022

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2324

Abstract

The line field (LF) design choice for the lateral image formation mechanism (lateral format) has historically been a fraction of the whole optical coherence tomography (OCT) field. However, as the OCT technology develops, the parallelised acquisition of LF-OCT formats (LF-time domain (TD)-OCT, LF-spectral domain (SD)-OCT, LF-swept source (SS)-OCT) offers benefits and capabilities, which may mean it is now becoming more mainstream. Prior reviews on OCT have focused on scanning point (SP) and, to a lesser extent, full field (FF), lateral formats, with, to our knowledge, no prior review specifically on the LF lateral format. Here, we address this gap in the literature by reviewing the history of each LF-OCT format, identifying the applications it has had and providing generic system design overviews. We then provide an analysis and discussion of the benefits and drawbacks of the format. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Optical Coherence Tomography)

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