Visible light optical coherence microscopy for quantitative imaging of human skin in vivo

Recent development of visible light Optical Coherence Microscopy (i.e. Optical Coherence Tomography employing high numerical aperture Objective) has pushed the axial/transverse resolution limit to < 2 mu m within tissues. Here, a fiber-based visible light Fourieer domain (FD) Optical Coherence Microscopy system is presented, employing a 10x water immersion Objective to achieve higher transverse resolution and reduced specular reflection when imaging human skin in vivo, using similar to 1-2 mW of incident power. Though with limited penetration depth, we demonstrated its application for in vivo imaging of human skin, and further measured the thicknesses of epidermis and dermo-epidermal junction. Furthermore, the total attenuation coefficient of the skin tissues was also estimated across epidermis and dermis.