Depth‐resolved method for attenuation coefficient calculation from optical coherence tomography data for improved biological structure visualization

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a promising tool for intraoperative tissue morphology determination. Several studies suggest that attenuation coefficient derived from the OCT images, can differentiate between tissues of different morphology, such as normal and pathological structures of the brain, skin, and other tissues. In the present study, the depth‐resolved method for attenuation coefficient calculation was adopted for the real‐world situation of the depth‐dependent OCT sensitivity and additive imaging noise with nonzero mean. It was shown that in the case of sharp focusing (~10 μm spot full width at half maximum [FWHM] or smaller at 1.3 μm central wavelength) only the proposed method for depth‐dependent sensitivity compensation does not introduce misleading artifacts into the calculated attenuation coefficient distribution. At the same time, the scanning beam focus spot with FWHM greater than 10 μm at 1.3 μm central wavelength allows one to use multiple approaches to the attenuation coefficient calculation without introducing noticeable bias. This feature may hinder the need for robust corrections for the depth‐resolved attenuation coefficient estimations from the community. Tissue attenuation coefficient distributions, calculated with a depth‐resolved approach from OCT data (right column) can reveal fine details in brain samples in comparison with the log‐and‐linear‐fit approach (left column).