Spectrally dependent roll-off in visible-light optical coherence tomography

Recent development of visible-light optical coherence tomography (vis-OCT) has introduced new applications for noninvasive spectroscopic imaging. However, the measured spectra may be altered by spectrally dependent roll-off (SDR). We formulated a mathematical model for SDR that accounted for nonuniform wavenumber spacing, optical aberrations, and misalignments in the spectrometer. We simulated SDR based on this model and found strong agreement with measurements from a vis-OCT system. We verified that SDR altered spectroscopic measurements of fully oxygenated blood. We corrected these alterations by normalizing each spectrally dependent A-line by the measured SDR of the spectrometer. Our investigations of SDR are critical for informing OCT spectrometer design, alignment, and spectroscopic measurements.