title: Monte-Carlo-based phase retardation estimator for polarization sensitive optical coherence tomography.
abstract: A Monte-Carlo-based phase retardation estimator is developed to correct the systematic error in phase retardation measurement by polarization sensitive optical coherence tomography (PS-OCT). Recent research has revealed that the phase retardation measured by PS-OCT has a distribution that is neither symmetric nor centered at the true value. Hence, a standard mean estimator gives us erroneous estimations of phase retardation, and it degrades the performance of PS-OCT for quantitative assessment. In this paper, the noise property in phase retardation is investigated in detail by Monte-Carlo simulation and experiments. A distribution transform function is designed to eliminate the systematic error by using the result of the Monte-Carlo simulation. This distribution transformation is followed by a mean estimator. This process provides a significantly better estimation of phase retardation than a standard mean estimator. This method is validated both by numerical simulations and experiments. The application of this method to in vitro and in vivo biological samples is also demonstrated.
authors.affiliation: Computational Optics Group at the University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan.
authors.forename: Lian
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Duan
authors.forename: Shuichi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Makita
authors.forename: Masahiro
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Yamanari
authors.forename: Yiheng
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Lim
authors.forename: Yoshiaki
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yasuno