OCT

DSP for OCT Signal Processing

Applications of OCT
Gratitude

OPTICAL COHERENCE
TOMOGRAPHY:SIGNAL PROCESSING AND
ALGORITHM

OPTICAL COHERENCE TOMOGRAPHY

OCT
DSP for OCT Signal Processing
Applications of OCT
Gratitude

What is OCT?
Principle and Instrumentation
OCT Systems
OCT Systems Processing
Types of OCT Systems
Basic Signal Processing Chain in OCT Systems

What is OCT?
Medical imaging modality with 1-10 m resolutions and
1-2 mm penetration depths
High-resolution, sub-surface non-invasive or minimally
invasive internal body imaging technique for structural and
quantitative imaging
Signal processing intensive suited for embedded
implementations using digital signal processors (DSP) and
system-on-chip (SoC) application processors
Performance given in cycles per scanline and total number
of scanlines that can be processed per second
Enables cross-sectional imaging of tissue microstructure in
situ and in real time
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OCT
DSP for OCT Signal Processing
Applications of OCT
Gratitude

What is OCT?
Principle and Instrumentation
OCT Systems
OCT Systems Processing
Types of OCT Systems
Basic Signal Processing Chain in OCT Systems

Principle and Instrumentation:

Based on the principle of low coherence interferometry
By stacking the axial scans in X and/or Y directions,two or
three dimensional imaging.
Imaging is performed by measuring the echo time delay
and intensity of back-reflected or backscattered light
Performed fiber-optically using delivery devices such as
handheldprobes,endoscopes,catheters,laparoscopes, and
needles
Measurements are performed using a Michelson
interferometer with a low coherence length light source
OPTICAL COHERENCE TOMOGRAPHY

OCT
DSP for OCT Signal Processing
Applications of OCT
Gratitude

What is OCT?
Principle and Instrumentation
OCT Systems
OCT Systems Processing
Types of OCT Systems
Basic Signal Processing Chain in OCT Systems

OCT Systems Using Michelson Interferometer

A standard Michelson
Interferometer with a
low-coherence light source is
used
Incoming broadband beam of
light is split into the reference
path and the sample path
After back-reflection from the
reference mirror and the multiple
layers of the
sample,respectively,they are
recombined
OPTICAL COHERENCE TOMOGRAPHY

OCT
DSP for OCT Signal Processing
Applications of OCT
Gratitude

What is OCT?
Principle and Instrumentation
OCT Systems
OCT Systems Processing
Types of OCT Systems
Basic Signal Processing Chain in OCT Systems

OCT Systems Using Michelson Interferometer

Thus an interference signal is formed

Due to broadband nature of light interference of the optical
fields occur only when the path lengths of the reference
and the sample arm are matched to within the coherence
length of the light
This interference signal carries information about the
sample at a depth determined by the reference path length

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OPTICAL COHERENCE TOMOGRAPHY

OCT
DSP for OCT Signal Processing
Applications of OCT
Gratitude

What is OCT?
Principle and Instrumentation
OCT Systems
OCT Systems Processing
Types of OCT Systems
Basic Signal Processing Chain in OCT Systems

Steps in OCT System processing

Signal processing intensive

Real-time data is to be acquired
Acquired data is processed to extract meaningful
information
and then the information is displayed

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OCT
DSP for OCT Signal Processing
Applications of OCT
Gratitude

What is OCT?
Principle and Instrumentation
OCT Systems
OCT Systems Processing
Types of OCT Systems
Basic Signal Processing Chain in OCT Systems

Time-domain OCT(TD-OCT)

Sample arm of
the interferometer
illuminates the
light on the tissue
and collects the
backscattered
light

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OCT
DSP for OCT Signal Processing
Applications of OCT
Gratitude

What is OCT?
Principle and Instrumentation
OCT Systems
OCT Systems Processing
Types of OCT Systems
Basic Signal Processing Chain in OCT Systems

Time-domain OCT(TD-OCT)
Reference arm of the interferometer has a reference path
delay which is scanned as a function of time
Optical interference between the light from the sample and
reference arms occurs only when the optical delays match
to within the coherence length of the light source
Photo-detector detects the average intensity over the
range of frequencies
The detected signal consists of a DC term and an
interference term that contains the sample information
Dual balanced approach is used to subtract a portion of
source signal through the use of a second photo-detector
before digitizing the signal is used to remove the DC term
partially
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OCT
DSP for OCT Signal Processing
Applications of OCT
Gratitude

What is OCT?
Principle and Instrumentation
OCT Systems
OCT Systems Processing
Types of OCT Systems
Basic Signal Processing Chain in OCT Systems

Spectral-domain OCT(SD-OCT)

A broadband-source of
light with short temporal
coherence length is used
as an input to the
interferometer.
Reference mirror position
is fixed

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OPTICAL COHERENCE TOMOGRAPHY

OCT
DSP for OCT Signal Processing
Applications of OCT
Gratitude

What is OCT?
Principle and Instrumentation
OCT Systems
OCT Systems Processing
Types of OCT Systems
Basic Signal Processing Chain in OCT Systems

Spectral-domain OCT(SD-OCT)
Echoes of light are obtained by Fourier transforming the
interference spectrum
Depth information is obtained by measuring the spectral
density in the detection arm using a spectrometer, where
the interference beam is dispersed by a diffraction grating
and the individual wavelength components are detected by
an array detector
the path difference remains fixed and is assumed to be
zero without loss of generality

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OCT
DSP for OCT Signal Processing
Applications of OCT
Gratitude

What is OCT?
Principle and Instrumentation
OCT Systems
OCT Systems Processing
Types of OCT Systems
Basic Signal Processing Chain in OCT Systems

Advantage of SD-OCT over TD-OCT

Permits faster acquisition of the entire depth
profile(A-scans)
Video-rate imaging is possible
High-speed acquisition without any moving parts
minimizes any distortion in the OCT images due to motion
in the sample
Theoretical signal-to-noise (SNR)ratio is independent of
the spectral bandwidth of the light source leading to
increase in axial resolution

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OPTICAL COHERENCE TOMOGRAPHY

OCT
DSP for OCT Signal Processing
Applications of OCT
Gratitude

What is OCT?
Principle and Instrumentation
OCT Systems
OCT Systems Processing
Types of OCT Systems
Basic Signal Processing Chain in OCT Systems

Swept Source Systems(SS-OCT)

A frequency-swept laser
or a tunable laser with
just a single detector is
used to obtain the
spectrogram

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OPTICAL COHERENCE TOMOGRAPHY

OCT
DSP for OCT Signal Processing
Applications of OCT
Gratitude

What is OCT?
Principle and Instrumentation
OCT Systems
OCT Systems Processing
Types of OCT Systems
Basic Signal Processing Chain in OCT Systems

Swept Source Systems(SS-OCT)

Require rapid tunable, narrow line-width lasers, which use
high-speed analog-to-digital(A/D) converters and
single-point detectors
The sample of received spectrum is probed with narrow
band but frequency varying source
Also the sample is probed with chirp like signal source and
the received signal is reflectionsfrom the reference and
from the samples
After data capturing the operations are same as SD-OCT

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OPTICAL COHERENCE TOMOGRAPHY

OCT
DSP for OCT Signal Processing
Applications of OCT
Gratitude

What is OCT?
Principle and Instrumentation
OCT Systems
OCT Systems Processing
Types of OCT Systems
Basic Signal Processing Chain in OCT Systems

Swept Source Systems(SS-OCT)

A dual-balanced detection is used to remove the DC before

digitization
Thus full dynamic range can be used to capture the
interference signal

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OCT
DSP for OCT Signal Processing
Applications of OCT
Gratitude

What is OCT?
Principle and Instrumentation
OCT Systems
OCT Systems Processing
Types of OCT Systems
Basic Signal Processing Chain in OCT Systems

Background Subtraction
To eliminate the reference power term, the reference
spectrum from only the reference arm is detected and
subtracted from the interference spectrum
The reference spectrum is acquired at the beginning of
every image acquisition to account for fluctuations in the
source between measurements
From the acquired data derive the reference spectrum
since the interference is usually high frequency fringes,
whereas, the background term has low frequency
components
In swept source systems, using dual-balanced
photo-detectors allows this subtraction in analog domain
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OPTICAL COHERENCE TOMOGRAPHY

OCT
DSP for OCT Signal Processing
Applications of OCT
Gratitude

What is OCT?
Principle and Instrumentation
OCT Systems
OCT Systems Processing
Types of OCT Systems
Basic Signal Processing Chain in OCT Systems

Re-Sampling

In SD-OCT systems, spectrometers measure optical

intensity as a function of wavelength
In order to apply the fast Fourier transform (FFT)
reconstructing the axial scan as a function of depth, the
spectrum should be evenly sampled in k-space
Therefore, the spectrometer output must be transformed
from the wavelength to the frequency space

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OPTICAL COHERENCE TOMOGRAPHY

OCT
DSP for OCT Signal Processing
Applications of OCT
Gratitude

What is OCT?
Principle and Instrumentation
OCT Systems
OCT Systems Processing
Types of OCT Systems
Basic Signal Processing Chain in OCT Systems

Image Formation (FFT)

The basic operation to get the depth resolved A-scan from
the interference fringes
The structural image is obtained by taking the magnitude
of the complex FFT output
Each FFT creates a particular A-scan
By moving the galvanometer in x direction,the successive
A-scan line is created, which is stacked together to create
a B mode image
By moving the galvanometer in both x-y direction, a full 3D
volume can be generated

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OPTICAL COHERENCE TOMOGRAPHY

OCT
DSP for OCT Signal Processing
Applications of OCT
Gratitude

What is OCT?
Principle and Instrumentation
OCT Systems
OCT Systems Processing
Types of OCT Systems
Basic Signal Processing Chain in OCT Systems

Display
Two dimensional OCT images are typically represented
using a density plot
The horizontal axis typically corresponds to the direction of
transverse scanning and the vertical axis corresponds to
the scanning depth
A gray level is plotted at a particular pixel on an image
corresponding to the magnitude of the depth profile at a
particular depth and transverse scanning position.
Pixel intensity range is compressed using the logarithmic
non-linearity before displaying it
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OPTICAL COHERENCE TOMOGRAPHY

OCT
DSP for OCT Signal Processing
Applications of OCT
Gratitude

What is OCT?
Principle and Instrumentation
OCT Systems
OCT Systems Processing
Types of OCT Systems
Basic Signal Processing Chain in OCT Systems

Image Enhancement
Speckle noise that arises from the interference between
coherent waves backscattered from nearby scatters in a
sample is the dominating source of noise in OCT images
Non-linear direction preserving digital filters such as mean
and median filters are used to improve the image quality
Simple signal averaging over the same line can also be
used to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of the data
collected at the cost of reduced frame rate
A secondary camera is sometimes used to track
involuntary movements and control the data acquisition in
a closed loop manner
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OPTICAL COHERENCE TOMOGRAPHY

OCT
DSP for OCT Signal Processing
Applications of OCT
Gratitude

What is OCT?
Principle and Instrumentation
OCT Systems
OCT Systems Processing
Types of OCT Systems
Basic Signal Processing Chain in OCT Systems

Dispersion Compensation
The refractive index of the biological tissues is, in general,
frequency dependent slowing down certain optical
frequencies to a greater extent than others, therefore,
dispersing the light
Dispersion correction can take place both in the hardware
and the software
As the sample being imaged itself could also be
dispersive,an automated numerical method of dispersion
compensation is desirable

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OCT
DSP for OCT Signal Processing
Applications of OCT
Gratitude

OCT Algorithm Implementation on DSP

DSP
Benchmarking of the key signal processing algorithms
needed to produce a B-mode image was done on Texas
Instruments C64x+ DSP architecture
TI has several variations of processors based on C64x+
architecture
These devices allow development of OCT systems at a
fractional power compared to x86 or graphics processing
unit (GPU) based units while maintaining the same
programmability feature

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OCT
DSP for OCT Signal Processing
Applications of OCT
Gratitude

OCT Algorithm Implementation on DSP

DSP
Within limits of processing capabilities, the same device
can be used to perform various modes of operations like
B-mode imaging, Doppler, polarization sensitive,etc.
Due to programmability, the same processing unit used for
main signal chain can be utilized for calibration and
different estimation algorithms needed to identify system
parameters
Due to smaller footprint, DSP-based systems allow the
development of smaller, low power, low cost as well as
battery-operated portable systems

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OCT
DSP for OCT Signal Processing
Applications of OCT
Gratitude

OCT Algorithm Implementation on DSP

Basic Introduction on OCT Algorithms

Using TIs Embedded Processor Software Toolkit for
Medical Imaging provides optimized functions to
implement such a signal processing chain on DSPs based
on the C64x+ architecture
TI has several variations of processors based on C64x+
architecture
Figure shows the basic signal processing chain needed to
create a structural image from the recorded interference
signal

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OPTICAL COHERENCE TOMOGRAPHY

OCT
DSP for OCT Signal Processing
Applications of OCT
Gratitude

OCT Algorithm Implementation on DSP

Background Subtraction

A simple operation where the background is subtracted

from the acquired data
This subtraction takes care of the DC component in the
signal that is due to the reflectance from the reference arm
Additional variations due to fixed pattern noise in the line
scan camera and variations in power spectral densities of
the source can also be suppressed by this method

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OPTICAL COHERENCE TOMOGRAPHY

OCT
DSP for OCT Signal Processing
Applications of OCT
Gratitude

OCT Algorithm Implementation on DSP

Resampling
In SS-OCT, the frequency sweeping is usually non-linear in
frequency (or k-space)
In SD-OCT, spectrometers are used that measure optical
intensity as a function of wavelength.The signal obtained is
non-equidistant in frequency (or k) space

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OCT
DSP for OCT Signal Processing
Applications of OCT
Gratitude

OCT Algorithm Implementation on DSP

Resampling

In either of the systems, the captured information is not

linearly spaced in frequency
A re-sampling technique is usually employed to resample
the recorded discrete intensities from the acquired domain
to linear frequency domain
The cubic spline interpolation algorithm is used as defined
in to perform the re-sampling function

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OPTICAL COHERENCE TOMOGRAPHY

OCT
DSP for OCT Signal Processing
Applications of OCT
Gratitude

OCT Algorithm Implementation on DSP

FFT
After resampling, the data is linear in the k-space and an
FFT is performed to reconstruct the axial scan as a
function of depth
The MED-STK has several variations of the FFT available
from the TI DSPLib
The routines use 32 bit internal precision math operations
with 16-bit twiddle factors and only allows power of 2 FFT
sizes
For the sizes of FFT used in OCT with 16-bit input, there is
no possibility of internal saturation
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OCT
DSP for OCT Signal Processing
Applications of OCT
Gratitude

OCT Algorithm Implementation on DSP

FFT

The 16-bit output is derived using your programmable right

shift value
Magnitude Computation
Log Compression

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OCT
DSP for OCT Signal Processing
Applications of OCT
Gratitude

OCT Algorithm Implementation on DSP

API

A DSP-based software implementation of these OCT

algorithms consists of well defined APIs
For all the OCT algorithms through the API all the physical
parameters related to the image of interest such as
number of scanlines, number of samplers per scanline,
number of frames, etc should be specified
Specific algorithms that have additional parameters should
also be specified

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OCT
DSP for OCT Signal Processing
Applications of OCT
Gratitude

OCT Algorithm Implementation on DSP

Flexibility
The DSP-based OCT algorithms should be flexible in
terms of having the ability to operate in different modes
The same DSP used for the main signal chain can be
utilized for calibration and different estimation algorithms
needed to identify system parameters like background
signal, the re-sampling points, the phase corrections for
dispersion compensation, etc
These parameters are either pre-computed during
calibration or computed automatically before the image
acquisition process.

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OCT
DSP for OCT Signal Processing
Applications of OCT
Gratitude

OCT Algorithm Implementation on DSP

Efficiency

The implementation should be highly efficient so that

minimum DSP CPU bandwidth is consumed for these
algorithms, allowing more space for future OCT algorithms
to be implemented

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OCT
DSP for OCT Signal Processing
Applications of OCT
Gratitude

OCT Algorithm Implementation on DSP

I/O Bandwidth Requirement

The I/O bandwidth requirements for CPUs to access all the
necessary data is algorithm dependent to a certain extent
In the resampling algorithms, eight lines of data have to be
accessed simultaneously for the efficient implementation of
the algorithm
The effect of cache on benchmarking depends on memory
organization and system function partitioning
All of the benchmarking provided here is done on a
TMS320C6455 device

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OCT
DSP for OCT Signal Processing
Applications of OCT
Gratitude

OCT Algorithm Implementation on DSP

Precesion Requirement
The system will suffer from poor images if the precisions
used throughout the system are not sucffient
If more than necessary precision is used,that will
unnecessarily increase the cycle count and reduce the
number of scanlines that can be processed through the
system
The APIs for 16-bit input and output have been optimized
except for the compression module, which outputs 8-bit
data for visualization
Since the analog to digital converter samples the
interference data with 10-14 bit precision,16 bit is sucient
for high-quality image production for this application
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OCT
DSP for OCT Signal Processing
Applications of OCT
Gratitude

Clinical Applications

As a noninvasive biomedical imaging modality that enables

cross-sectional visualization of tissue microstructures in
vivo.
Architectural morphology to be visualized in situ and in real
time
Enables imaging of structures in which biopsy would be
hazardous or impossible, and promise to reduce the
sampling errors associated with excisional biopsy

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OCT
DSP for OCT Signal Processing
Applications of OCT
Gratitude

Clinical Applications
Translated from bench to various clinical applications
including ophthalmology , cardiology , gastroenterology ,
dermatology , dentistry , urology, gynecology , among
others
Due to programmability, the same processing unit used for
main signal chain can be utilized for calibration and
different estimation algorithms needed to identify system
parameters
The most developed clinical OCT applications are those
focusing on ophthalmic, cardiovascular,and oncologic
imaging
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OPTICAL COHERENCE TOMOGRAPHY

OCT
DSP for OCT Signal Processing
Applications of OCT
Gratitude

THANK YOU

Mr.VINOD G.
Mr.HARIKRISHNAN A.I.

SHAKIRA THANKAYATHIL

OPTICAL COHERENCE TOMOGRAPHY