Multi-Contrast Jones-Matrix Optical Coherence Tomography—The Concept, Principle, Implementation, and Applications

Jones-matrix optical coherence tomography (JM-OCT) is an extension of polarization-sensitive OCT, which provides multiple types of optical contrasts of biological and clinical samples. JM-OCT measures the spatial distribution of the Jones matrix of the sample and also its time sequence. All contrasts (i.e., multi-contrast OCT images) are then computed from the Jones matrix. The contrasts obtained from the Jones matrix include not only the conventional and polarization-insensitive OCT intensity, cumulative and local phase retardation (birefringence), degree-of-polarization uniformity quantifying the polarization randomness of the sample, diattenuation, but also signal attenuation coefficient, sample scatterer density, Doppler OCT, OCT angiography, and dynamic OCT that contrasts intracellular motility or metabolism by analyzing the temporal fluctuation of the OCT signal. JM-OCT is a generalized version of OCT because it measures the generalized form of the sample information; i.e., the Jones matrix sequence. This review summarizes the basic conception, mathematical principle, hardware implementation, signal and image processing, and biological and clinical applications of JM-OCT. Advanced technical topics, including JM-OCT-specific noise correction and quantity estimation and JM-OCT's self-calibration nature, are also described.