Optical coherence tomography: fundamental principles, instrumental designs and biomedical applications

The advances made in the last two decades in interference technologies, optical instrumentation, catheter technology, optical detectors, speed of data acquisition and processing as well as light sources have facilitated the transformation of optical coherence tomography from an optical method used mainly in research laboratories into a valuable tool applied in various areas of medicine and health sciences. This review paper highlights the place occupied by optical coherence tomography in relation to other imaging methods that are used in medical and life science areas such as ophthalmology, cardiology, dentistry and gastrointestinal endoscopy. Together with the basic principles that lay behind the imaging method itself, this review provides a summary of the functional differences between time-domain, spectral-domain and full-field optical coherence tomography, a presentation of specific methods for processing the data acquired by these systems, an introduction to the noise sources that plague the detected signal and the progress made in optical coherence tomography catheter technology over the last decade.