CC BY
20B-PS-2
Numerical simulation of optical coherence tomography interference signal occurring in the intravascular space
A. Potlov1, S. Frolov1, S. Proskurin1
1Tambov State Technical University, Biomedical Engineering, Tambov, Russian Federation
An original approach to numerical simulation of the biological fluids flow through the scanning plane of an optical coherence tomography (OCT) system is described. The proposed approach includes the generation of a geometric layout of the biological object under study; Monte Carlo simulation of the photon migration process in a geometric layout; variation of the characteristics of the section of the geometric layout corresponding to the intravascular space; the interference signals (A-scans) simulation. A sketch of structure was used as a source of information about the geometry of the investigated biological object. This sketch was subjected to posterization, manual identification of structures, their encoding and assigning to tabular optical properties. Numerical simulation of the photon migration and A-scans were realized using classical Monte-Carlo technique. Optical properties of a part of a geometric layout corresponding to the lumen of a blood vessel constantly vary in such a way as to simulate fluctuations of erythrocytes or their aggregation in blood plasma. Moreover, the speed of these fluctuations in different parts of the vascular bed is chosen in such a way as to correspond to the desired shape of the flow velocity profile. If the flow is laminar (parabolic profile), then the rate of fluctuations decreases from the center of the vessel to the walls. In case of turbulent flow, the local velocities of fluctuations form cork-shaped profiles of various geometries.
The proposed approach can be used for developing highly effective algorithms of estimating the relative and absolute blood flow velocity using Doppler OCT systems.
This work was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR project 18-0100786 A).
