Extended Data Fig. 2: Comparison between dual-input and triple-input PS-OCT (TRIPS-OCT) methods under the condition of the same acquisition time.

a, Nine repetitive scans modulated by triple polarization states of the guinea pig retina were acquired in-vivo. Different sets of 6 of the 9 repetitive scans were used to reconstruct the birefringence images with the dual-input method and TRIPS-OCT, respectively. For the dual-input method, the three scans modulated by the same input polarization state were averaged before birefringence reconstruction. For the triple input method, the two scans modulated by the same polarization state were averaged before birefringence reconstruction. The averaging was performed on the intensity images without considering the phase. This averaging process confirms that the acquisition time of the data used by the dual-input and triple-input methods for the birefringence reconstruction are identical. b, Birefringence images reconstructed from triple-input and dual-input methods using different combinations of the input polarization states. c, Birefringence noise characterization for the different combinations using the inner retina in Fig. a indicated by the orange area (pixel number n = 5117 from 1 cross-sectional image). Central lines of violin plots indicate mean. The improvement in noise performance using TRIPS-OCT is quite consistent between different combinations of Stokes vectors. The slight difference in the noise level of dual-input combinations is due to the dependency between the edge-artifacts and the absolute polarization states (Supplementary Discussion 1). SD: Standard deviation.