Space variant deconvolution for optical coherence tomography

We present a method for mitigating space variant blur occurring in the images acquired using Optical coherence tomography (OCT). The effect of Gaussian beam divergence on the image resolution is analyzed mathematically to develop space dependent two dimensional point spread functions that define the blurring kernel. Two standard deconvolution algorithms are used to deblur the images using the space dependent point spread functions. We show that the deconvolution method is effective in improving the transverse resolution of cross sectional OCT images at regions up to several times as deep as the confocal region of the Gaussian beam. © 2011 SPIE-OSA-IEEE.