Anisotropic aberration correction using region of interest based digital adaptive optics in Fourier domain OCT

In this paper a numerical technique is presented to compensate for anisotropic optical aberrations, which are usually present across the lateral field of view in the out of focus regions, in high resolution optical coherence tomography and microscopy (OCT/OCM) setups. The recorded enface image field at different depths in the tomogram is digitally divided into smaller sub-regions or the regions of interest (ROIs), processed individually using subaperture based digital adaptive optics (DAO), and finally stitched together to yield a final image with a uniform diffraction limited resolution across the entire field of view (FOV). Using this method, a sub-micron lateral resolution is achieved over a depth range of 218 [Formula: see text]for a nano-particle phantom sample imaged using a fiber based point scanning spectral domain (SD) OCM system with a limited depth of focus (DOF) of ~7 [Formula: see text]at a numerical aperture (NA) of 0.6. Thus, an increase in DOF by ~30x is demonstrated in this case. The application of this method is also shown in ex vivo mouse adipose tissue.