Imaginary part-based correlation mapping optical coherence tomography for imaging of blood vessels in vivo.

We present an imaginary part-based correlation mapping optical coherence tomography (IMcmOCT) technique for in vivo blood vessels imaging. In the conventional correlation mapping optical coherence tomography (cmOCT) method, two adjacent frames of intensity-based structural images are correlated to extract blood flow information and the size of correlation window has to be increased to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of microcirculation maps, which may cause image blur and miss the small blood vessels. In the IMcmOCT method, the imaginary part of a depth-resolved complex analytic signal in two adjacent B-scans is correlated to reconstruct microcirculation maps. Both phantom and in vivo experiments were implemented to demonstrate that the proposed method can provide improved sensitivity for extracting blood flow information in small vessels.