Papers Published

1. Divakar Rao, K. and Choma, M.A. and Yazdanfar, S. and Rollins, A.M. and Izatt, J.A., Molecular contrast in optical coherence tomography by use of a pump-probe technique, Opt. Lett. (USA), vol. 28 no. 5 (2003), pp. 340 - 2 .
   (last updated on 2007/04/13)

   Abstract:
   We describe a novel technique for contrast enhancement in optical coherence tomography (OCT) that makes possible molecular-specific imaging for what is believed to be the first time. A pump-probe technique is employed in which a pulsed pump laser is tuned to ground-state absorption in a molecule of interest. The location of the target molecule population is derived from the resulting transient absorption of OCT sample-arm light acting as probe light. A signal processing technique for three-dimensional localization of the transient absorption signal is described, and preliminary results exhibiting OCT contrast from methylene blue dye in multilayer and scattering phantoms are presented

   Keywords:
   biomedical optical imaging;dyes;light scattering;medical image processing;optical pumping;optical tomography;transients;