Novel mechanical contrast in optical coherence elastography based on tissue heterogeneity

Optical coherence elastography (OCE) provides mechanical contrast on the micro-scale and has shown promise in a number of clinical applications. In the majority of OCE methods, local homogeneity is inherently assumed in the mechanical models, which results in low accuracy in complex tissues. Here, we present a novel compression OCE method that exploits tissue heterogeneity to generate mechanical contrast in human breast tissue by mapping the full strain tensor. We used the strain tensor to map mechanical parameters such as Euler angle of principal compression. We also demonstrate a new form of quantitative OCE by mapping local Poisson's ratio.