Simultaneous spectroscopic and elastographic measurement by multifunctional optical coherence tomography

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a noninvasive and non-contact technique to measure cross-sectional structural images of samples at micrometer resolution. Functional extensions of OCT has been developed to enhance contrast based on physical properties, such as absorption spectrum and elasticity or stiffness. This research develops a multi-functional optical coherence tomography by combining spectroscopic OCT and optical coherence elastography (OCE) to simultaneously measure spectroscopic and mechanical properties of samples. Both spectroscopic OCT and OCE are basically additional data processing of a conventional frequency domain OCT (FD-OCT) without requirement of hardware modification.