Interferometric synthetic aperture microscopy: Inverse scattering for optical coherence tomography

Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Microscopy (ISAM), a real time imaging, has been developed by modeling the physical parameters in optical coherence tomography (OCT). Inverse scattering theory for OCT has been used to resolve 3D object structure, taking into account the final beam width, diffraction, dispersion, and defocusing effects. ISAM has increased the resolution achievable from an OCT signal outside of the confocal parameter of the focusing lens by exploiting the previously undecipherable out-of-focus data within the conventional OCT imaging scheme. The reconstruction algorithm may be implemented for either cross-sectional images or full 3D volumes, and, because of the modest computational complexity of this technique. This method, which properly rephases the signal from scatterers to produce a well-resolved image, will also be extended to imaging biological samples to achieve high, spatially invariant resolution in 3D.