Collagen organization plays an important role in maintaining structural integrity and determining tissue function. Polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography (PSOCT) is a promising noninvasive three-dimensional imaging tool for mapping collagen organization in vivo. While PSOCT systems with multiple polarization inputs have demonstrated the ability to visualize depth-resolved collagen organization, systems, which use a single input polarization state have not yet demonstrated sufficient reconstruction quality. Herein we describe a PSOCT based polarization state transmission model that reveals the depth-dependent polarization state evolution of light backscattered within a birefringent sample. Based on this model, we propose a polarization state tracing method that relies on a discrete differential geometric analysis of the evolution of the polarization state in depth along the Poincare sphere for depth-resolved birefringent imaging using only one single input polarization state. We demonstrate the ability of this method to visualize depth-resolved myocardial architecture in both healthy and infarcted rodent hearts (ex vivo) and collagen structures responsible for skin tension lines at various anatomical locations on the face of a healthy human volunteer (in vivo).

胶原组织在维持结构完整性和决定组织功能方面起着重要作用。偏振敏感光学相干断层扫描 (PSOCT) 是一种很有前途的非侵入性三维成像工具，用于绘制体内胶原组织。虽然具有多个偏振输入的 PSOCT 系统已经展示了可视化深度分辨胶原组织的能力，但使用单个输入偏振状态的系统尚未证明足够的重建质量。在此，我们描述了一种基于 PSOCT 的偏振态传输模型，该模型揭示了双折射样品内反向散射光的深度依赖性偏振态演化。基于这个模型，我们提出了一种偏振态追踪方法，该方法依赖于沿 Poincare 球的深度偏振态演变的离散微分几何分析，用于仅使用一个单一输入偏振态的深度分辨双折射成像。我们证明了这种方法能够在健康和梗死的啮齿动物心脏（离体）和负责健康人类志愿者面部不同解剖位置（体内）皮肤张力线的胶原结构中可视化深度分辨心肌结构。