Full-field optical coherence tomography for tissue imaging

Full-field optical coherence tomography (FF-OCT) is a biomedical imaging technique based on white-light interference microscopy. FF-OCT produces tomographic images by arithmetic combination of interferometric images acquired with an area camera and by illuminating the whole field to be imaged with low-coherence light. The major interest for FFOCT lies in its high imaging resolution in both transverse and axial directions using a simple and robust experimental arrangement. This paper provides an overview of the principle of FF-OCT. The system characteristics are reported in details, including the detection sensitivity and spatial resolution. Several of the challenges, advantages and drawbacks of the technique are discussed and compared with other optical imaging techniques such as conventional OCT and confocal microscopy. Images of normal and diseased human breast tissue are presented to illustrate the potential of FF-OCT for cellular-level anatomopathological examinations without sample processing.