A novel correction method and tissue simulation approach for system polarization mode dispersion in polarization sensitive OCT

Polarization Sensitive Optical Coherence Tomography (PS-OCT) provides tissue specific contrast by assessing tissue birefringence and optic axis (OA) orientation. Fiber-based PS-OCT systems suffer from polarization mode dispersion (PMD) due to birefringence induced by the optical fibers. We present a novel method for correcting for PMD. We first construct a wavelength dependent correction matrix by combining a new Jones matrix ordering procedure and a Stokes eigenvectors clustering analysis. We then find a remaining wavelength independent correction matrix which accounts for the circular birefringence introduced by the optical fibers. We validated this method by developing simulations of PS-OCT retinal imaging. We showed that the newly found correction method is able to remove wavelength dependent effects, correct for an overal remaining OA rotation out of the Q-U plane and retrieve the correct OA orientation and birefringence value. We applied this method to correct for system PMD in in-vivo PS-OCT lung data.