Autocorrelation optical coherence tomography for mapping transverse particle-flow velocity

We present an autocorrelation method to quantitatively map transverse particle-flow velocity with a Fourier domain optical coherence tomography system. This method is derived from the intensity fluctuation of the backscattered light modulated by flowing particles. When passing through the probe beam, moving particles encode a transit time into the backscattered light. The slope of the normalized autocorrelation function of the backscattered light is proportional to the transverse velocity. The proposed method is experimentally verified using intralipid scattering flow phantom. Keywords optical coherence tomography; transverse velocity; autocorrelation Quantitative and non-invasive mapping of blood flow velocity in vivo is important for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. Optical coherence tomography (OCT), especially after its advent of Fourier domain OCT, is a promising tool for providing high speed and high sensitive 3D images of blood flow velocity within biological tissues [1–5]. Recently, a number of literatures describing optical coherence tomography of flow velocity have been presented [6–9]. Most of them are derived from the Doppler shift or Doppler broadening o