Functional extensions of Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) stand to enhance the value of structural imaging for clinical applications. Polarization sensitive (PS-) OCT and attenuation coefficient imaging provide complementary information useful for interrogating complex tissue microenvironments such as atherosclerotic plaques. However, additional hardware for generating two input polarization states, and enabling angular-diverse measurements, is necessary to fully exploit these two respective techniques. We present a platform for simultaneous, depth-multiplexed acquisition of PS- and angular diverse data, expanding prior methods for fiber-based PS-OCT and aperture-based numerical aperture (NA) multiplexing, and demonstrate its utility in discriminating plaque components in human coronary arteries.
|