Open AccessSensitivity enhancement in swept-source optical coherence tomography by parametric balanced detector and amplifier
Author(s) -
Jiqiang Kang,
Xiaoming Wei,
Bowen Li,
Xie Wang,
Luoqin Yu,
Sisi Tan,
Chandra Jinata,
Kenneth K. Y. Wong
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
biomedical optics express
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.362
H-Index - 86
ISSN - 2156-7085
DOI - 10.1364/boe.7.001294
Subject(s) - optical coherence tomography , optics , parametric statistics , sensitivity (control systems) , optical parametric amplifier , detector , materials science , amplifier , physics , optical amplifier , optoelectronics , laser , mathematics , electronic engineering , cmos , statistics , engineering
We proposed a sensitivity enhancement method of the interference-based signal detection approach and applied it on a swept-source optical coherence tomography (SS-OCT) system through all-fiber optical parametric amplifier (FOPA) and parametric balanced detector (BD). The parametric BD was realized by combining the signal and phase conjugated idler band that was newly-generated through FOPA, and specifically by superimposing these two bands at a photodetector. The sensitivity enhancement by FOPA and parametric BD in SS-OCT were demonstrated experimentally. The results show that SS-OCT with FOPA and SS-OCT with parametric BD can provide more than 9 dB and 12 dB sensitivity improvement, respectively, when compared with the conventional SS-OCT in a spectral bandwidth spanning over 76 nm. To further verify and elaborate their sensitivity enhancement, a bio-sample imaging experiment was conducted on loach eyes by conventional SS-OCT setup, SS-OCT with FOPA and parametric BD at different illumination power levels. All these results proved that using FOPA and parametric BD could improve the sensitivity significantly in SS-OCT systems.