Open AccessSpectrally-sampled OCT for sensitivity improvement from limited optical power
Author(s) -
Eun Joo Jung,
Jaeseok Park,
Myung Yung Jeong,
Chang-Seok Kim,
Tae Joong Eom,
Bong-Ahn Yu,
S. Gee,
Jongmin Lee,
Moon Ki Kim
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
optics express
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.394
H-Index - 271
ISSN - 1094-4087
DOI - 10.1364/oe.16.017457
Subject(s) - optical coherence tomography , optics , optical power , materials science , comb filter , signal (programming language) , autocorrelation , sensitivity (control systems) , spectral density , wavelength , filter (signal processing) , physics , telecommunications , laser , computer science , electronic engineering , statistics , mathematics , computer vision , programming language , engineering
Although high optical illumination power is favored in optical coherence tomography (OCT) for better signal-to-noise ratio, optical power is often limited by a damaged threshold for biomedical living tissues and autocorrelation signals observed in tomograms. In order to improve signal sensitivity without increasing the optical illumination power, a spectrally sampled multi-wavelength light source is proposed for the OCT system. A fiber Sagnac comb filter was used to spectrally sample the output of a continuous spectral light source. Point spread function analysis shows that the spectrally sampled OCT has an almost 50% dynamic range improvement in comparison with a conventional continuous spectral light source OCT for the same average optical power of 6 mW.