We developed a highly parallel simulator of Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) of objects with arbitrary spatial distributions. This Monte Carlo method based simulator models the object as a tetrahedron-based mesh, and implements an advanced importance sampling scheme. This new method makes OCT simulations more practical, since the corresponding serial Central Processing Unit (CPU) based implementation requires approximately 360 hours to simulate OCT imaging of a single B-scan. We implemented this new simulator on Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) using the Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) platform and programming model by NVIDIA. We demonstrated that our new simulator requires one order of magnitude less time, compared to its serial implementation, to simulate the same OCT images. Our new parallel OCT simulator could be an important and practical tool to study different OCT phenomena and to design novel OCT systems with superior imaging performance.
KEYWORDS: Monte Carlo methods, Optical coherence tomography, Photons, Computer simulations, Scattering, FDA class I medical device development, Multilayers, Reflectivity, FDA class II medical device development, Optical spheres
We developed a Monte Carlo-based simulator of optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging for turbid media with arbitrary spatial distributions. This simulator allows computation of both Class I diffusive reflectance due to ballistic and quasiballistic scattered photons and Class II diffusive reflectance due to multiple scattered photons. It was implemented using a tetrahedron-based mesh and importance sampling to significantly reduce computational time. Our simulation results were verified by comparing them with results from two previously validated OCT simulators for multilayered media. We present simulation results for OCT imaging of a sphere inside a background slab, which would not have been possible with earlier simulators. We also discuss three important aspects of our simulator: (1) resolution, (2) accuracy, and (3) computation time. Our simulator could be used to study important OCT phenomena and to design OCT systems with improved performance.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.