Computational multi-directional optical coherence tomography for visualizing the microstructural directionality of the tissue

We demonstrated computational multi-directional optical coherence tomography to visualize the microstructural directionality of a tissue. It uses numerical sub-aperture masks to the spatial frequency spectrum of en face OCT signals. An OCT signal consists of the intensity and phase, and they are processed independently. By applying the sub-aperture masks with several directions to the intensity signal’s spectrum, we can determine the dominant en face direction of the microstructure. In addition, sub-resolution depth-orientation of the microstructure is obtained by sub-aperture processing of the OCT phase signal. The microstructural directionality of bovine Achilles tendon and chicken breast muscle samples were visualized.