Virtual Biopsy and Physical Characterization of Tissues, Biofilms, Implants and Viscoelastic Liquids Using Vibrational Optical Coherence Tomography

Tissue biopsies and implant analysis during animal testing or clinical studies are a requirement for development of new surgical materials and procedures. In this paper we report the use of vibrational OCT (VOCT) to evaluate the viscoelastic behavior of tissues, polymeric materials, biofilms, and viscoelastic solutions of macromolecules. Our results suggest that VOCT is a useful technique to characterize the behavior of cellular tissues and biofilms, polymeric implant materials and viscoelastic solutions used in medicine. It is demonstrated that the modulus and resonant frequency squared per unit thickness is a feature that can be used to characterize a variety of tissues. Further work is needed to understand the generalized behavior of synthetic polymers and viscoelastic solutions.