Phase-resolved OCT/ODT for imaging tissue microcirculation

Summary form only given. Optical Doppler tomography (ODT), also termed Doppler optical coherence tomography (D-OCT), is a recently developed optical technique for imaging both tissue structure and flow velocity of moving particles in highly scattering media. However, previous ODT systems have been unable to achieve simultaneously both high imaging speed and high velocity sensitivity, which are essential for measuring flow in small blood vessels of human skin. In this report, we describe a novel phase-resolved OCT/ODT system that uses phase information derived from a Hilbert transformation to image blood now in human skin with fast-scanning speed and high velocity sensitivity.