In vivo imaging of human oral hard and soft tissues by polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Abstract

Since optical coherence tomography (OCT) provides three-dimensional high-resolution images of biological tissue, the benefit of polarization contrast in the field of dentistry is highlighted in this study. Polarization-sensitive OCT (PS OCT) with phase-sensitive recording is used for imaging dental and mucosal tissues in the human oral cavity in vivo. An enhanced polarization contrast of oral structures is reached by analyzing the signals of the co-and crosspolarized channels of the swept source PS OCT system quantitatively with respect to reflectivity, retardation, optic axis orientation, and depolarization. The calculation of these polarization parameters enables a high tissue-specific contrast imaging for the detailed physical interpretation of human oral hard and soft tissues. For the proof-of-principle, imaging of composite restorations and mineralization defects at premolars as well as gingival, lingual, and labial oral mucosa was performed in vivo within the anterior oral cavity. The achieved contrast-enhanced results of the investigated human oral tissues by means of polarizationsensitive imaging are evaluated by the comparison with conventional intensity-based OCT.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Article number121717
Number of pages17
JournalJournal of Biomedical Optics
Volume22
Issue number12
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2017
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

researchoutputwizard legacy.publication#78940
Scopus 85039774706
PubMed 29264891
researchoutputwizard legacy.publication#79746
ORCID /0000-0002-8160-3000/work/142248327
ORCID /0000-0003-0554-2178/work/142249797
ORCID /0009-0008-7642-8608/work/142255304
ORCID /0000-0003-2292-5533/work/142256545

Keywords

Keywords

  • Dentistry, Medical and biological imaging, Optical coherence tomography, Polarization contrast, Tissue