Cancellation of coherent artifacts in optical coherence tomography imaging

Coherent artifacts in optical coherence tomography (OCT) images can severel y degrade image quality by introducing false targets if no targets are pres ent at the artifact locations. Coherent artifacts can also add constructive ly or destructively to the targets that are present at the artifact locatio ns. This constructive or destructive interference will result in cancellati on of the true targets or in display of incorrect echo amplitudes of the ta rgets. We introduce the use of a nonlinear deconvolution algorithm, CLEAN, to cancel coherent artifacts in OCT images of extracted human teeth. The re sults show that CLEAN can reduce the coherent artifacts to the noise backgr ound, sharpen the air-enamel and enamel-dentin interfaces, and improve the image contrast. (C) 2001 Optical Society of America.