Autocorrelation optical coherence tomography for mapping transverse particle-flow velocity

We present an autocorrelation method to quantitatively map transverse particle-flow velocity with a Fourier-domain optical coherence tomography system. This method is derived from the intensity fluctuation of the backscattered light modulated by flowing particles. When passing through the probe beam, moving particles encode a transit time into the backscattered light. The slope of the normalized autocorrelation function of the backscattered light is proportional to the transverse velocity. The proposed method is experimentally verified using an intralipid scattering flow phantom. (C) 2010 Optical Society of America