A theoretical framework for the analysis of optical anisotropy in birefringent biological tissues with polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography

Polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography (PSOCT) has established itself as an important non-invasive optical imaging tool to study the birefringent biological tissues. The complex 3D structure architecture of the collagen fibers in articular cartilage is investigated using a time domain PSOCT (TD-PSOCT) system and the depth-wise cumulative retardance profiles obtained are compared with a three layer cartilage model. The PSOCT result obtained from the variable incidence angle (VIA) experiment of bovine cartilage sample is found to be consistent with the proposed lamellar cartilage model based on scanning electron microscope studies. This shows potential use of PSOCT-VIA technique to obtain depth-wise information about the complex 3D architecture of collagen fibers in the cartilage. Further studies would have to be carried out to map out depth wise retardance information at different sites of the cartilage, which could establish the general validity of this approach.