Digital confocal imaging in holographic optical coherence tomography at high space-bandwidth product

Abstract

Full-field Fourier-domain optical coherence tomography (FF-FD-OCT) enables rapid volumetric imaging but lacks the confocal gating inherent to point-scanning OCT. By acquiring volumes under multiple oblique illuminations, a digital confocal volume can be synthesized in post-processing, a technique originally developed within the framework of reflection matrix imaging (RMI). Existing implementations, however, are often time-domain, off-axis, or use a Michelson interferometer, which reduces sensitivity, speed and the usable space-bandwidth product (SBP). Here, we present an oblique-illumination FF-FD-OCT system in a Mach-Zehnder configuration. This setup enables optimal use of SBP, providing up to a fourfold increase in effective acquisition throughput. In addition, we pose the scattering and aberrations as an overdetermined system, allowing a closed-form solution of an alternating least squares problem. The resulting iterative optimization is equivalent to the state-of-the-art closed-loop accumulation of single scattering (CLASS) algorithm. We demonstrate the setup and reconstruction method in lens tissue, a PSF phantom, a USAF target, and a model eye. The resulting digital confocal volumes provide locally optimized focusing and detection quality, and show improved resolution and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) compared to conventional FF-FD-OCT. The technique combines the advantages of FF-FD-OCT and confocal OCT while mitigating the limitations of both approaches.

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Cite

BibTeX RIS

BibTeX

@misc{klooster2026digital,
  title = {{Digital confocal imaging in holographic optical coherence tomography at high space-bandwidth product}},
  author = {N. P. Klooster and S. A. Thakur and F. Zeisberger and J. R. Hagen and S. Eggert and U. Najar and D. Hillmann},
  howpublished = {arXiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.06566},
  eprint = {2610.06566},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.06566},
  note = {CC BY 4.0},
}

RIS

TY  - UNPB
TI  - Digital confocal imaging in holographic optical coherence tomography at high space-bandwidth product
AU  - N. P. Klooster
AU  - S. A. Thakur
AU  - F. Zeisberger
AU  - J. R. Hagen
AU  - S. Eggert
AU  - U. Najar
AU  - D. Hillmann
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/05
PB  - arXiv
DO  - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.06566
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.06566
AB  - Full-field Fourier-domain optical coherence tomography (FF-FD-OCT) enables rapid volumetric imaging but lacks the confocal gating inherent to point-scanning OCT. By acquiring volumes under multiple oblique illuminations, a digital confocal volume can be synthesized in post-processing, a technique originally developed within the framework of reflection matrix imaging (RMI). Existing implementations, however, are often time-domain, off-axis, or use a Michelson interferometer, which reduces sensitivity, speed and the usable space-bandwidth product (SBP). Here, we present an oblique-illumination FF-FD-OCT system in a Mach-Zehnder configuration. This setup enables optimal use of SBP, providing up to a fourfold increase in effective acquisition throughput. In addition, we pose the scattering and aberrations as an overdetermined system, allowing a closed-form solution of an alternating least squares problem. The resulting iterative optimization is equivalent to the state-of-the-art closed-loop accumulation of single scattering (CLASS) algorithm. We demonstrate the setup and reconstruction method in lens tissue, a PSF phantom, a USAF target, and a model eye. The resulting digital confocal volumes provide locally optimized focusing and detection quality, and show improved resolution and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) compared to conventional FF-FD-OCT. The technique combines the advantages of FF-FD-OCT and confocal OCT while mitigating the limitations of both approaches.
ER  -

Abstract

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