Attenuation of stripe artifacts in optical coherence tomography images through wavelet-FFT filtering

The use of polarization-maintaining (PM) fibers for polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography (PS-OCT) can result in numerous image artifacts which degrade the reliability of birefringence measurements. Similar artifacts can also arise in conventional OCT, due to stray reflections from optical surfaces, a problem which is increasing in tandem with the steady rise in source coherence lengths. Here, a recently presented wavelet-FFT filter[Opt. Express 17(10), 8567 (2009). [PubMed] ] is combined with surface flattening displacement fields in order to suppress ghost artifacts following either a duplicate or inverse profile to that of the sample surface. In addition, horizontal coherence stripes originating from Fresnel reflections of optical components are suppressed in order to facilitate accurate surface detection. The result is an improved visualization of the phase-retardance profile within tissue, which may improve the reliability of curve-fitting methods for localized birefringence estimation. While the results are presented with a focus towards PS-OCT, the filtering method can also be applied to the removal of stray reflection artifacts in conventional OCT images.