Common-path Optical Interferometry for Stabilized Dynamic Contrast Imaging: A Feasibility Study

The motion of organelles inside a cell is an important intrinsic indicator for assessing cell physiology and tissue viability. Dynamic contrast full-field optical coherence tomography (D-FFOCT) is a promising imaging technology that can visualize intracellular movements using the variance of temporal interference signals caused by biological motions. However, double-path interferometry in D-FFOCT can be highly vulnerable to surrounding noise, which may cause turbulence in the interference signals, contaminating the sample dynamics. Therefore, we propose a method for stabilized D-FFOCT imaging in noisy environments by using common-path interferometry in D-FFOCT. A comparative study shows that D-FFOCT with the proposed method achieves stable dynamic contrast imaging of a scattering phantom in motion that is over tenfold more noise-insensitive compared to the conventional one, and thus this imaging capability can provide cleaner motion contrast images. With the proposed approach, the intracellular dynamics of biological samples are imaged and monitored.