Phase volume correlation approach for overcoming decorrelation in three-dimensional phase-sensitive optical coherence elastography

The dynamic measurement range in phase-sensitive optical coherence elastography (PhS-OCE) is limited for the phase decorrelation induced by pixel-level displacements in precision measurement, where the consideration of the time-resolved incremental method and in-plane pixels tracking method is insufficient to recover the phase holistically. This work presented a phase volume correlation (PVC) approach to handle the phase decorrelation in three-dimensional PhS-OCE. By utilizing the ability of the discontinuous source diagram to quantify voxel phase correlation levels, the PVC establishes a wrapped phase-matching equation aimed at optimizing the number of volumetric source distributions. The three-dimensional pixel-level motions in the deformed phase space can be evaluated by solving the optimization model for phase matching, thereby enabling the reconstruction of the volumetric phase variation corrupted by decorrelation. The large deformations experiments including diffident loadings, i.e., stretching, three-point bending, and light-cured, verified the proposed PPVC approach's of feasibility, reliability, and stability. The contribution of this work can dramatically enhance the dynamic measuring range in three-dimensional PhS-OCE.