Optical coherence tomography (OCT) with a robust depth-resolved attenuation compensation method for a wide range of imaging applications is proposed and demonstrated. We derive a model for deducing the attenuation coefficients and the signal compensation value using the depth-dependent backscattering profiles, to mitigate under and over-estimation in tissue imaging. We validated the method using numerical simulation and phantoms, where we achieved stable and robust compensation results over the entire depth of samples. The comparison between other attenuation characterization models and our proposed model is also performed.
Keywords: Optical coherence tomography; optical attenuation coefficient; optimized depth-resolved estimation.