Polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography technology

Abstract

In addition to standard optical coherence tomography (OCT) intensity images, polarization-sensitive OCT (PS-OCT) can visualize birefringence of fibrous tissues and polarization scrambling of melanin pigment, thereby adding new image contrasts. In this paper, an overview of the PS-OCT technology is described briefly. It is shown that polarization is a fundamentally important concept for OCT, can cause an artifact in standard OCT, and can add image contrasts that cannot be seen in standard OCT. PS-OCT images of scarred filtering bleb created by trabeculectomy are shown as a representative clinical example.