Correction of Phase-error for Phase-resolved k-clocked Optical Frequency Domain Imaging

Phase-resolved optical frequency domain imaging (OFDI) has emerged as a promising technique for blood flow measurement in human tissues. Phase stability is essential for this technique to achieve high accuracy in flow velocity measurement. In OFDI systems that use k-clocking for the data acquisition, phase-error occurs due to jitter in the data acquisition electronics. We presented a statistical analysis of jitter represented as point shifts of the k-clocked spectrum. We demonstrated a real-time phase-error correction algorithm for phase-resolved OFDI. A 50 KHz wavelength-swept laser (Axsun Technologies) based balanced-detection OFDI system was developed centered at 1310 nm. To evaluate the performance of this algorithm, a stationary gold mirror was employed as sample for phase analysis. Furthermore, we implemented this algorithm for imaging of human skin. Good-quality skin structure and Doppler image can be observed in real-time after phase-error correction. The results show that the algorithm can effectively correct the jitter-induced phase error in OFDI system.