A Spatiotemporal Illumination Model for 3D Image Fusion in Optical
  Coherence Tomography
Stefan Ploner Jungeun Won Julia Schottenhamml Jessica Girgis Kenneth Lam Nadia Waheed James Fujimoto Andreas Maier
Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a non-invasive, micrometer-scale
imaging modality that has become a clinical standard in ophthalmology. By
raster-scanning the retina, sequential cross-sectional image slices are
acquired to generate volumetric data. In-vivo imaging suffers from
discontinuities between slices that show up as motion and illumination
artifacts. We present a new illumination model that exploits continuity in
orthogonally raster-scanned volume data. Our novel spatiotemporal
parametrization adheres to illumination continuity both temporally, along the
imaged slices, as well as spatially, in the transverse directions. Yet, our
formulation does not make inter-slice assumptions, which could have
discontinuities. This is the first optimization of a 3D inverse model in an
image reconstruction context in OCT. Evaluation in 68 volumes from eyes with
pathology showed reduction of illumination artifacts in 88\% of the data, and
only 6\% showed moderate residual illumination artifacts. The method enables
the use of forward-warped motion corrected data, which is more accurate, and
enables supersampling and advanced 3D image reconstruction in OCT.