Real-time speckle reduction in optical coherence tomography using the dual window method.

Speckle is an intrinsic noise of interferometric signals which reduces contrast and degrades the quality of optical coherence tomography (OCT) images. Here, we present a frequency compounding speckle reduction technique using the dual window (DW) method. Using the DW method, speckle noise is reduced without the need to acquire multiple frames. A ~25% improvement in the contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) was achieved using the DW speckle reduction method with only minimal loss (~17%) in axial resolution. We also demonstrate that real-time speckle reduction can be achieved at a B-scan rate of ~21 frames per second using a graphic processing unit (GPU). The DW speckle reduction technique can work on any existing OCT instrument without further system modification or extra components. This makes it applicable both in real-time imaging systems and during post-processing.