dc.description.abstract |
Currently several medical imaging techniques are in operation in clinical
environments that help the doctors to diagnose diseases before proceeding to
treatment. This research investigated and implemented configurations for a medical
imaging technique called Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT).
The Michelson interferometer has been the principal configuration for OCT systems.
For endoscopic OCT applications though such a configuration is susceptible to
polarisation induced signal fading due to environmental changes within the sample
arm, like fibre bending and temperature fluctuations. The development and testing of
a Fizeau interferometer based OCT system demonstrate the elimination of this
polarisation induced signal fading as the sample and reference arm of the
interferometer experience the same environmental changes. The Fizeau interferometer
is formed between the end of the fibre and the sample itself. A secondary processing
interferometer is used in this configuration, to compensate the path difference inherent
to the Fizeau configuration. Longitudinal resolution is about 19 m in air, and lateral
resolution about 23 m. A signal-to-noise ratio of about 80 dB was achieved with this
system and several sets of image data were collected from laboratory and biological
samples.
An OCT system based on a Fizeau interferometer incorporating a coherent fibre
imaging bundle was also investigated. Fibres in the bundle are accessed sequentially
by a beam focused onto the input face of the bundle, allowing 2D information to be
acquired using point detection. Incorporating a fibre optic imaging bundle in Fizeau
based interferometer OCT allows mechanical scanning parts to be removed from the
sample arm, resulting in a passive probe. Such a configuration can form a compact,
robust and “downlead insensitive” OCT system and is a strong candidate for in vivo
applications. The performance of leached and wound coherent fibre optic bundles was
accessed and an analysis is presented. The longitudinal resolution of the system
developed was about 10 m in air, and lateral resolution about 9 m. This thesis
demonstrates several sets of image data that were collected from various samples
using a Fizeau interferometer based OCT incorporating coherent imaging bundles. 2D
image data captured by such a configuration are presented and reported for the first
time in this thesis. |
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