Speckle noise removal in optical coherence tomography

摘要

A system, method and apparatus for speckle noise removal based upon structural correlation in an OCT imaging system. In accordance with the present invention, several two- or three-dimensional OCT image scans can be acquired for processing by an adaptive algorithm. Specifically, at each image point an image intensity can be computed that quantifies a measure of dispersion of the image values in a particular direction with respect to their mean. Subsequently, a direction θ₀(x, y) can be selected which minimizes the energy function at the given pixel (x, y). Finally, a value proportional to a local average of the input image around the point (x, y) can be chosen for the output image. In this way speckle noise can be minimized if not removed while, at the same time, maintaining the image substantially free of obvious artifacts.