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Speckle Reduction in an All Fiber Time Domain Common Path Optical Coherence Tomography by Frame Averaging

Acharya, Megha N.

Abstract Details

2012, Master of Science in Engineering, University of Akron, Biomedical Engineering.
Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is a non-invasive, high resolution morphological imaging modality which has gained significance since its inception in 1992 due to its diversified areas of tissue diagnostics in medical imaging. Time Domain OCT (TDOCT) is one of its simplest commercially viable systems. Image noise in TDOCT has been fundamentally attributed to speckle and most of the commercial algorithms that tackle image noise are predominantly hardware related or utilize complex statistical procedures. Simple frame averaging is a cost effective, post processing algorithm whose effects on TDOCT systems have not been evaluated and hence there was an unmet need forming the basis of our investigation. To answer this need, the Niris® 1300e Imaging System, an all fiber common path TDOCT system was used. We investigated the efficacy of simple frame averaging using non-living and tissue phantoms containing various sizes and distributions of scatterers that give rise to random noise or speckle. Signal to noise ratio (SNR) was used to quantify the reduction in speckle noise for each averaged and un-averaged frames. The optical probe with an effective frame rate of 4 frames per second was used as part of our study. Our contention was to observe an increase in SNR for averaged frames hence providing an improvement when compared to un-averaged single frame. The second investigation was to observe the difference in SNR for 4, 8 and 12 averaged frames to depict that the improvement was dependent upon the number of frames averaged for analysis. The four phantoms used for evaluation were- onion, skin from fingertip, oral mucosa and extracted teeth. We observed an improvement of upto 18% in SNR for 12 averaged frames, with the highest improvement in human fingertip frames. We also computed significant difference in 4, 8 and 12 averaged frames using ANOVA for evaluation. Thus, simple averaging was shown to be an effective speckle reduction algorithm in common path TDOCT.
Narender Reddy, Dr. (Advisor)
Paul Amazeen, Dr. (Advisor)
Dale Mugler, Dr. (Committee Member)
71 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Acharya, M. N. (2012). Speckle Reduction in an All Fiber Time Domain Common Path Optical Coherence Tomography by Frame Averaging [Master's thesis, University of Akron]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron1353336847

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Acharya, Megha. Speckle Reduction in an All Fiber Time Domain Common Path Optical Coherence Tomography by Frame Averaging. 2012. University of Akron, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron1353336847.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Acharya, Megha. "Speckle Reduction in an All Fiber Time Domain Common Path Optical Coherence Tomography by Frame Averaging." Master's thesis, University of Akron, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron1353336847

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)