Abstract
The speckle contrast ratio in optical coherence tomography images has been shown to depend on scatterer density when the detected signal is dominated by single backscattering. Here we investigate the influence of multiple scattering on the speckle contrast ratio, and also on the parallel and perpendicular polarization channels in polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography images, including the correlation between them. Conditions under which the contrast ratio and polarization sensitive detection can be used to discriminate regions of OCT images affected by multiple scattering are discussed. The contrast ratio and the correlation between polarization channels were both found to markedly decrease as the ratio of multiple to single scattering increased. A high correlation between polarization channels, indicating that imaging is being performed in the single-scattering regime, provides greater confidence in interpreting the value of scatterer density obtained from the contrast ratio.