Analysis of multiple scattering effects in optical Doppler tomography

Optical Doppler tomography (ODT) combines Doppler velocimetry and optical coherence tomography (OCT) to obtain high-resolution cross-sectional imaging of particle flow velocity in scattering media such as the human retina and skin. Here, we present the results of a theoretical analysis of ODT where multiple scattering effects are included. The purpose of this analysis is to determine how multiple scattering affects the estimation of the depth-resolved localized flow velocity. Depth-resolved velocity estimates are obtained directly from the corresponding mean or standard deviation of the observed Doppler frequency spectrum. Thus, in the present analysis, the dependence of the mean and standard deviation of the Doppler shift on the scattering properties of the flowing medium are obtained. Taking the multiple scattering effects into account, we are able to explain previous measurements of depth-resolved retinal flow profiles where the influence of multiple scattering was observed [Yazdanfar et al., Opt. Lett. 25, 1448 (2000)]. To the best of our knowledge, no analytical model exists that are able to explain these observations.