Automated, Depth-Resolved Estimation of the Attenuation Coefficient From Optical Coherence Tomography Data

We present a method for automated, depth-resolved extraction of the attenuation coefficient from Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) data. In contrast to previous automated, depth-resolved methods, the Depth-Resolved Confocal (DRC) technique derives an invertible mapping between the measured OCT intensity data and the attenuation coefficient while considering the confocal function and sensitivity fall-off, which are critical to ensure accurate measurements of the attenuation coefficient in practical settings (e.g., clinical endoscopy). We also show that further improvement of the estimated attenuation coefficient is possible by formulating image denoising as a convex optimization problem that we term Intensity Weighted Horizontal Total Variation (iwhTV). The performance and accuracy of DRC alone and DRC+iwhTV are validated with simulated data, optical phantoms, and ex-vivo porcine tissue. Our results suggest that implementation of DRC+iwhTV represents a novel way to improve OCT contrast for better tissue characterization through quantitative imaging.