Speculative/philosophical modeling of measurement for comprehending modern OCT imaging

Abstract

Modern conception of Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) measurement covers a wide range of measurement acts from photo-detection to Artificial-Intelligence (AI) based diagnosis. Here the measurement targets may include the structure, optical properties, tissue (by image processing and segmentation), and disease (by computer-aided diagnosis). Despite recent rapid expansion of the measurement targets, there is not theoretical (speculative) model to comprehend such wide spectrum of the measurement acts. Here we present a new speculative (theoretical) modeling of optical measurement, so-called “epistemological metrology model.” We use this model to critically understand several modern extensions of Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT), such as computer-aided diagnosis, Degree-of-Polarization-Uniformity (DOPU) imaging, and Attenuation-Coefficient (AC) imaging.