Simultaneous analysis of flow velocity and spectroscopic properties of scattering media with the use of joint spectral and time domain OCT

In this paper we describe how to simultaneously retrieve spectroscopic and flow velocity information of scattering media such as biological tissues with the use of Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT). The main problem which must be overcome during spectral information recovery is random speckle noise. It cannot be effectively removed if the medium is stationary. However, if during the measurement time there is a continuous change of locations of scattering particles causing the phase change, an efficient averaging of speckle-affected spectra takes place. In order to implement this idea we propose to make use of the measurement protocol of joined Spectral and Time domain OCT method which was originally designed for flow velocity estimation. As a result a multi-purpose method was tailored which makes possible structural imaging, flow velocity measurement and spatially resolved light attenuation determination.