TM scenarios.42A major challenge with using the SV-OCT technique is theeffect of blood vessel shadowing artifacts.75 The streaking and/or shadowing artifacts encountered as one moves through theblood vessel to the deeper layers of the tissue sample canlead to an overestimation of the vascular area (Fig. 2). Toremove these artifacts from the SV image, a step-down exponential filter could be used, while preserving the overall vascularstructure.11,47,48,75 In this de-shadowing process, the SV signalis attenuated by a factor γ from the top surface of the tissueand is proportional to the sum of the de-shadowed SV pixelabove it. Mathematically, the de-shadowing process is expressed as