The use of optical coherence tomography envelope statistics to quantify local temperature changes in tissue-mimicking phantoms

There exists a multitude of extreme thermally induced therapies for treating both benign and malignant tumors. Advancement in optics has shown prospect in clinical applications, especially monitoring oncological clinical treatments like thermal ablation. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) backscattered spectrum has demonstrated sensitivity to structural changes on the microscopic level. Envelope statistics analysis on OCT images of tissue-mimicking phantoms that are thermally modulated can provide structural information that correlates to changes in temperature. Several probability distribution functions were analyzed by looking at suitable theoretical matches to the empirical OCT data. Results indicate that the generalized gamma function was the best fit and has potential in relating the scale parameter to the size of the scatterers in the phantom. Moreover, the parameters revealed sensitivity to temperature changes, which can be further studied to understand the biological response of tissue that are exposed to extreme thermal conditions in order to improve patient care.