Fig. 1.

Schematic of the custom-built phase-sensitive optical coherence elastography (PhS-OCE) system, comprised of a micro-scale air pulse stimulator to induce tissue mechanical waves and a high-resolution spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) imaging system to detect the resulting tissue deformation. Common-path OCT was constructed based on conventional OCT by blocking the reference arm and inserting a optically flat reference plate between the telecentric scan lens and sample. The reference plane was the sample-side optical surface of the reference plate.