Review of dynamic optical coherence tomography for intracellular motility: signals, metrics, and their applications [Invited]

Dynamic optical coherence tomography (dOCT) is a group of techniques primarily applied to visualize intracellular motility within tissue biopsies and cultures as it relates to changes in cell viability, status, and stiffness. Here, we provide an overview of variance-based, autocorrelation-based, and spectral algorithms commonly applied to different types of dOCT signals, how the metrics extracted using these algorithms relate to the underlying intracellular motion, and review how they have been employed in dOCT applications. Detailed guidance is provided for selecting or developing metrics and algorithms to use, depending on the OCT hardware and biological motions of interest.