title: Spectrally-sampled OCT for sensitivity improvement from limited optical power.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Nanosystem Engineering, Pusan National University, Busan, Korea.
authors.forename: Eun Joo
authors.initials: EJ
authors.lastname: Jung
authors.forename: Jae-Seok
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Park
authors.forename: Myung Yung
authors.initials: MY
authors.lastname: Jeong
authors.forename: Chang-Seok
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Tae Joong
authors.initials: TJ
authors.lastname: Eom
authors.forename: Bong-Ahn
authors.initials: BA
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.forename: Sangyoun
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gee
authors.forename: Jongmin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Moon Ki
authors.initials: MK
authors.lastname: Kim