Image enhancement of common-path fourier-domain optical coherence tomography for monitoring osteoarthritis in rats using a non-linear anisotropic filter

We utilized internally developed common-path Fourier-domain optical coherence tomography (CP-FDOCT) to monitor the deterioration of articular cartilage in rats with osteoarthritis (OA), Monosodium iodoacetate (MIA) was injected into the knee joint to observe the progression of OA. We terminated rats at intervals of one, two, and three weeks, and acquired subsequent CP-FDOCT and histological images. The histological images demonstrated similar patterns to OCT images. These results indicated the significant potential of CP-FDOCT for use in the non-invasive diagnosis of OA. The image quality was greatly improved by using a non-linear anisotropic filter on the OCT images acquired from the developed system. According to the results, it was possible to confirm the similarity of the OCT image to histological images, and the OCT images with improved image quality were obtained by application of the non-linear anisotropic filter.