Processing and rendering of Fourier domain optical coherence tomography images at a line rate over 524 kHz using a graphics processing unit.

In Fourier domain optical coherence tomography (FD-OCT), a large amount of interference data needs to be resampled from the wavelength domain to the wavenumber domain prior to Fourier transformation. We present an approach to optimize this data processing, using a graphics processing unit (GPU) and parallel processing algorithms. We demonstrate an increased processing and rendering rate over that previously reported by using GPU paged memory to render data in the GPU rather than copying back to the CPU. This avoids unnecessary and slow data transfer, enabling a processing and display rate of well over 524,000 A-scan∕s for a single frame. To the best of our knowledge this is the fastest processing demonstrated to date and the first time that FD-OCT processing and rendering has been demonstrated entirely on a GPU.