In Vitro Assessment of Optical Properties of Blood by Applying the Extended Huygens-Fresnel Principle to Time-Domain Optical Coherence Tomography Signal at 1300 nm

Abstract EN

A direct method for the measurement of the optical attenuation coefficient and the scattering anisotropy parameter based on applying the extended Huygens-Fresnel principle to optical coherence tomography images of blood is demonstrated.

The images are acquired with a low-power probing beam at the wavelength of 1300 nm.

Values of 12.15 mm−1 and 0.95 are found for the total attenuation coefficient and the scattering anisotropy factor, respectively.

Also, as a preliminary step, the optical refraction index is determined with a precision of two decimal numbers directly from optical coherence images.

The total attenuation coefficient and the scattering anisotropy factor are determined with precisions within experimental error margins of 5% and 2%, respectively.

Readable OCT signal is obtained for a maximum propagation of light into blood of 0.25 mm.

At the maximum probed depth, the measured signal is almost 103 smaller than its initial intensity when entering the sample.