{
  "abstract": "Phase-sensitive optical coherence tomography (OCT) measures motion from phase differences between repeated acquisitions, supporting techniques such as Doppler OCT and optical coherence elastography (OCE). A recent numerical and experimental study showed that, even without noise, displacement estimation is less accurate in dark speckles. Here, we demonstrate analytically why displacement is not proportional to phase difference in speckled OCT images. We derive an expansion for compression OCE containing higher-order terms beyond the conventional linear term and show that neglecting them introduces errors that increase with depth and strain-discontinuity magnitude. We also identify two phenomena that perturb the phase linearity, one producing features resembling phase-wrapping events that may be mitigated by phase-unwrapping techniques. Finally, we introduce a displacement-estimation method that overcomes these limitations and achieves errors two orders of magnitude lower than conventional approaches. These phase-instability findings may reshape motion measurement beyond compression OCE, including dynamic OCT.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [
    "Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, University College London, London, UK. andrea.mazzolani.18@ucl.ac.uk.",
    "BRITElab, Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research, QEII Medical Centre Nedlands and Centre for Medical Research, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA, Australia.",
    "Department of Electrical, Electronic & Computer Engineering, School of Engineering, The University of Western Australia, Perth, WA, Australia.",
    "Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, University College London, London, UK.",
    "Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, Garching, Germany.",
    "Institute of Physics, Faculty of Physics, Astronomy and Informatics, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Toruń, Poland."
  ],
  "article_type": "research article",
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 5,
  "authors": [
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "Andrea Mazzolani",
      "orcid": "0000-0003-3562-5281"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        1,
        2
      ],
      "name": "Jiayue Li"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        3,
        4
      ],
      "name": "Balázs Dura-Kovács",
      "orcid": "0009-0003-3939-0384"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        1,
        2,
        5
      ],
      "name": "Brendan F Kennedy"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        3,
        2
      ],
      "name": "Peter R T Munro",
      "orcid": "0000-0001-9306-3673"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/0y2hyejgeadym.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.1038/s41467-026-77549-2",
  "fulltext_url": "https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC13677722",
  "id": "0y2hyejgeadym",
  "issns": [
    "2041-1723"
  ],
  "landing_url": "https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42893993",
  "language": "eng",
  "licence": "CC-BY",
  "licence_label": "CC BY",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "openalex",
      "2204|Optical Coherence Tomography Applications"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7213279198",
  "pdf_url": "https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC13677722?pdf=render",
  "pmcid": "PMC13677722",
  "pmid": "42893993",
  "published": "2026-09-16",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/0y2hyejgeadym.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:19:41Z",
      "native_id": "MED:42893993",
      "source": "europepmc",
      "url": "https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42893993"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [],
  "title": "Insight into phase-sensitive optical coherence tomography displacement measurement.",
  "title_text": "Insight into phase-sensitive optical coherence tomography displacement measurement.",
  "type": "peer-reviewed",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:19:41Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/0y2hyejgeadym",
  "venue": "Nature communications",
  "versions": []
}