LAUSR

The quantitative modeling of the imaging signal of pathological areas and healthy areas is necessary to improve the specificity of diagnosis with tomographic en face images obtained with full field optical coherence tomography (FFOCT). In this work, we propose to use the depth-resolved change in the fractal parameter as a quantitative specific biomarker of the stages of disease. The idea is based on the fact that tissue is a random medium and only statistical parameters that characterize tissue structure are appropriate. We successfully relate the imaging signal in FFOCT to the tissue structure in terms of the scattering function and the coherent transfer function of the system. The formula is then used to analyze the ratio of the Fourier transforms of the cancerous tissue to the normal tissue. We found that when the tissue changes from the normal to cancerous the ratio of the spectrum of the index inhomogeneities takes the form of an inverse power law and the changes in the fractal parameter can be determined by estimating slopes of the spectra of the ratio plotted on a log-log scale. The fresh normal and cancer liver tissues were imaged to demonstrate the potential diagnostic value of the method at early stages when there are no significant changes in tissue microstructures.