Imaging the Electro-Kinetic Response of Biological Tissues with Optical Coherence Tomography

This thesis reports on developing a novel approach to imaging the electro-kinetic response of biological tissues with optical coherence tomography (OCT). The changes of backscattered OCT signal from tissues were investigated with a low frequency AC electric field being applied to the tissues. Advanced processing algorithms were developed to analyze the amplitude and phase changes of OCT signal. Two-dimensional electrically induced optical changes (EIOC) amplitude and phase images related to the electro-kinetic response of soft tissues were obtained with depth resolution and compared with structural OCT images. The procedure for removing the background noise from EIOC images was introduced.