Physically Reasonable Tissue Properties for Optical Coherence Tomography of Brain Malignancies

Optical coherence tomography of the ex vivo human and rat brain tissue samples is performed. The analysis of attenuation coefficient, coefficient based on effective refractive index, and their standard deviations was obtained from OCT measurements. The comparison of these physically reasonable features demonstrates the high variance of brain tissue optical properties and reveals the advantages and weaknesses of OCT as a diagnostic tool for neurosurgery.