Existing conventional OCT systems lack the ability to robustly measure biomechanical contrast. While many wave-based elastography methods have been developed for imaging stiffness, they also have limitations that make adaptation to imaging in vivo infeasible. While passive elastography doesn’t require coherence, we also cannot derive quantitative mechanical properties without it. Similarly, it been assumed that reverberant elastography also requires coherence. However, through benchtop raster-scanning and balloon catheter radially-scanning OCT, we demonstrate that it is possible to adapt reverberant elastography for unsynchronized, free-running excitation to obtain cross-sectional shear wave elastography at speeds compatible with in vivo applications.
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