Development of Portable Optical Coherence Tomography(II)

Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is a non-invasive real-time medical imaging technique similar to ultrasound but with higher imaging resolution about 5 〜15 microns. The penetration depth of OCT in the human tissues generally reaches 2 mm. OCT has already widely been used in ophthalmology for retina or cornea structure imaging. More recently, OCT is also applied in cardiology, otolaryngology, dentistry and so on. In dermatology, the common diagnosis method is biopsy or surface observation by an experienced doctor. However, there is no other technique able to clearly observe the internal structure of in v^-vo human skin. In this three year project cooperating with Chang Gung Hospital, we will develop a portable OCT system for real-time imaging in vivo human skin to support diagnosis in dermatological clinics. In the past year, the full-range optical coherence tomography technique has been developed to double the image range for the requirement of better skin image depth in dermatology. And we invented the pseudo-spectrum reconstruction method to reducing the saturation image artifact which is usually caused by the strong backscattering of the skin surface to improve OCT application in dermatology. To continue our previous research, one hand-held probe will be developed to realize the portable OCT system for clinical use in the first year of this project. In the second year, we will incorporate the graphic processing unit (GPU) for parallel computing to accelerate image processing speed in order to achieve real-time 3D imaging.

Project ID:PB10408-5714
External Project ID:MOST104-2221-E182-024-MY2