Application of iterative deconvolution methods for optical coherent imaging

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) images transverse resolution mostly depends on the light source spectrum width. Unfortunately, most common sources providing the required power for decent OCT image have narrow spectrum, which generate a resolution loss. It is possible, assuming the OCT system is linear shift-invariant, to consider the consequence of this spectrum narrowness as a convolution. It becomes then possible to enhance this resolution through iterative deconvolution methods (IDM). However those methods have a drawback, as they usually significantly enhance speckle, which is another consequence of the source spectrum narrowness. To compensate this, we rely on preliminary speckle filtering; and especially the adaptative ones, which provide better final results. We first studied consequences of the most popular IDM on OCT images, and then the effect of preliminary adaptive speckle filtering by different methods.