Virtual-OCT: A simulated optical coherence tomography instrument

• Main Authors: Ning Liu, Cuixia Dai, Yuanhe Tang, Peng Xi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: World Scientific Publishing 2014-09-01
• Series: Journal of Innovative Optical Health Sciences
• Subjects: Optical coherence tomography; simulation; LabVIEW; depth-resolved imaging; cross-sectional imaging
• Online Access: http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/pdf/10.1142/S1793545814500308

We report the virtual instrumentation of both time-domain (TD) and spectral-domain (SD) optical coherence tomography (OCT) systems. With a virtual partial coherence source from either a simulated or measured spectrum, the OCT signals of both A-scan and B-scan were demonstrated. The spectrometric detector's pixel number, dynamic range, noise, as well as spectral resolution can be simulated in the virtual spectral domain (SD-OCT). The virtual-OCT system provides an environment for parameter evaluation and algorithm optimization for experimental OCT instrumentation, and promotes the understanding of OCT imaging and signal post-processing processes.