Robust phase unwrapping for phase images in Fourier domain Doppler optical coherence tomography

To solve the 2π phase ambiguity for phase-resolved Doppler images in Doppler optical coherence tomography, we present a modified network programming technique for the first time to the best of our knowledge. The proposed method assumes that error of the discrete derivatives between unwrapped phase image and wrapped phase image can be arbitrary values instead of integer-multiple of 2π, which makes the real-phase restoration accurate and robust against noise. We compared our proposed method with the network programming method. Parameters including root-mean-square-error and noise amplification degree were adopted for comparison. The experimental study on simulated images, phantom, and real-vessel OCT images were performed. The proposed method consistently achieves optimal results.