Pierce Mark C, Strasswimmer John, Hyle Park B, Cense Barry, De Boer Johannes F
Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, Wellman Center for Photomedicine, 50 Blossom Street Boston, Massachusetts 02114, USA.
J Biomed Opt. 2004 Mar-Apr;9(2):287-91. doi: 10.1117/1.1645797.
Optical coherence tomography enables cross-sectional imaging of tissue structure to depths of around 1.5 mm, at high-resolution and in real time. Incorporation of polarization sensitivity (PS) provides an additional contrast mechanism which is complementary to images mapping backscattered intensity only. We present here polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography (OCT) images of human skin in vivo, demonstrating the ability of the technique to visualize and quantify the birefringent properties of skin. Variation in normal skin birefringence according to anatomical location is demonstrated, and discussed in relation to collagen distribution at each location. From measurements on a sample of five human volunteers, mean double-pass phase retardation rates of 0.340+/-0.143, 0.250+/-0.076, and 0.592+/-0.142 deg/microm were obtained for the dorsal hand, temple, and lower back regions, respectively. We demonstrate how averaging the Stokes parameters of backscattered light over a range of axial and lateral dimensions results in a reduction of speckle-induced noise. Examples of PS-OCT images from skin sites following wound healing and repair are also presented and discussed.
光学相干断层扫描能够以高分辨率实时对组织结构进行深度约为1.5毫米的横截面成像。加入偏振敏感性（PS）可提供一种额外的对比机制，它是仅映射背向散射强度的图像的补充。我们在此展示了人体皮肤活体偏振敏感光学相干断层扫描（OCT）图像，证明了该技术可视化和量化皮肤双折射特性的能力。展示了正常皮肤双折射随解剖位置的变化，并结合每个位置的胶原蛋白分布进行了讨论。通过对五名人类志愿者样本的测量，分别获得了手背、颞部和下背部区域的平均双程相位延迟率为0.340±0.143、0.250±0.076和0.592±0.142度/微米。我们展示了如何在一系列轴向和横向维度上对背向散射光的斯托克斯参数进行平均，从而降低散斑诱导噪声。还展示并讨论了伤口愈合和修复后皮肤部位的PS-OCT图像示例。
