Abstract
The absorption of nanosecond laser pulses induces rapid thermo-elastic deformation in tissue. A sub-micrometer scale displacement occurs within a few microseconds after the pulse arrival. In this Letter, we investigate the laser-induced thermo-elastic deformation using a 1.5 MHz phase-sensitive optical coherence tomography (OCT) system. A displacement image can be reconstructed, which enables a new modality of phase-sensitive OCT, called thermo-elastic OCT. An analysis of the results shows that the optical absorption is a dominating factor for the displacement. Thermo-elastic OCT is capable of visualizing inclusions that do not appear on the structural OCT image, providing additional tissue type information.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 3466-3469 |
Number of pages | 4 |
Journal | Optics Letters |
Volume | 42 |
Issue number | 17 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Sept 2017 |