Polarization-sensitive optical coherence elastography.

Polarization-sensitive optical coherence elastography (PS-OCE) is developed for improved tissue discrimination. It integrates Jones matrix-based PS-optical coherence tomography (PS-OCT) with compression OCE. The method simultaneously measures the OCT intensity, attenuation coefficient, birefringence, and microstructural deformation (MSD) induced by tissue compression. porcine aorta and esophagus tissues were investigated by PS-OCE and histological imaging. The tissue properties measured by PS-OCE are shown as cross-sectional images and a three-dimensional (3-D) depth-trajectory plot. In this trajectory plot, the average attenuation coefficient, birefringence, and MSD were computed at each depth, and the trajectory in the depth direction was plotted in a 3-D feature space of these three properties. The tissue boundaries in a histological image corresponded with the depth-trajectory inflection points. Histogram analysis and t-distributed stochastic neighbour embedding (t-SNE) visualization of the three tissue properties indicated that the PS-OCE measurements provide sufficient information to discriminate porcine esophagus tissues.