Determination of scattering coefficient and scattering anisotropy factor of tissue-mimicking phantoms using line-field confocal optical coherence tomography (LC-OCT)

Line-field confocal optical coherence tomography (LC-OCT) is an imaging modality based on a combination of time-domain optical coherence tomography and reflectance confocal microscopy. LC-OCT provides three-dimensional images of semi-transparent samples with a spatial resolution of ∼ 1 μm. The technique is primarily applied to in vivo skin imaging. The image contrast in LC-OCT arises from the backscattering of incident light by the sample microstructures, which is determined by the optical scattering properties of the sample, characterized by the scattering coefficient μs and the scattering anisotropy factor g. In biological tissues, the scattering properties are determined by the organization, structure and refractive indexes of the sample. The measurement of these properties using LC-OCT would therefore allow a quantitative characterization of tissues in vivo. We present a method for extracting the two scattering properties μs and g of tissue-mimicking phantoms from 3D LC-OCT images. The method provides the mean values of μs and g over a lateral field of view of 1.2 mm × 0.5 mm (x × y). It can be applied to monolayered and bilayered samples, where it allows extraction of μs and g of each layer. Our approach is based on a calibration using a phantom with known optical scattering properties and on the application of a theoretical model to the intensity depth profiles acquired by LC-OCT. It was experimentally tested against integrating spheres and collimated transmission measurements for a set of monolayered and bilayered scattering phantoms.