title: Spectral degree of polarization uniformity for polarization-sensitive OCT.
abstract: Depolarization of light can be measured by polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography (PS-OCT) and has been used to improve tissue discrimination as well as segmentation of pigmented structures. Most approaches to depolarization assessment for PS-OCT - such as the degree of polarization uniformity (DOPU) - rely on measuring the uniformity of polarization states using spatial evaluation kernels. In this article, we present a different approach which exploits the spectral dimension. We introduce the spectral DOPU for the pixelwise analysis of polarization state variations between sub-bands of the broadband light source spectrum. Alongside a comparison with conventional spatial and temporal DOPU algorithms, we demonstrate imaging in the healthy human retina, and apply the technique for contrasting hard exudates in diabetic retinopathy and investigating the pigment epithelium of the rat iris.
authors.affiliation: Center for Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria ; Medical Imaging Cluster, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Bernhard
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Baumann
authors.affiliation: Center for Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zotter
authors.affiliation: Center for Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria ; Medical Imaging Cluster, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Pircher
authors.affiliation: Center for Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Erich
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Götzinger
authors.affiliation: Medical Imaging Cluster, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria ; Core Facility Imaging, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Sabine
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Rauscher
authors.affiliation: Core Facility for Research and Technology, University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Glösmann
authors.affiliation: Department of Ophthalmology and Optometry, General Hospital and Medical University Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Jan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lammer
authors.affiliation: Medical Imaging Cluster, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria ; Department of Ophthalmology and Optometry, General Hospital and Medical University Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Ursula
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Schmidt-Erfurth
authors.affiliation: Medical Imaging Cluster, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria ; Core Facility Imaging, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Marion
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Gröger
authors.affiliation: Center for Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria ; Medical Imaging Cluster, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Christoph K
authors.initials: CK
authors.lastname: Hitzenberger
keywords: medical and biological imaging; multiple scattering; optical coherence tomography; polarization-selective devices