Real-time resampling in Fourier domain optical coherence tomography using a graphics processing unit

Fourier domain optical coherence tomography (FD-OCT) requires either a linear-in-wavenumber spectrometer or a computationally heavy software algorithm to recalibrate the acquired optical signal from wavelength to wavenumber. The first method is sensitive to the position of the prism in the spectrometer, while the second method drastically slows down the system speed when it is implemented on a serially oriented central processing unit. We implement the full resampling process on a commercial graphics processing unit (GPU), distributing the necessary calculations to many stream processors that operate in parallel. A comparison between several recalibration methods is made in terms of performance and image quality. The GPU is also used to accelerate the fast Fourier transform (FFT) and to remove the background noise, thereby achieving full GPU-based signal processing without the need for extra resampling hardware. A display rate of 25 frames/sec is achieved for processed images (1024x1024 pixels) using a line-scan charge-coupled device (CCD) camera operating at 25.6 kHz.