title: Polarization maintaining fiber based ultra-high resolution spectral domain polarization sensitive optical coherence tomography.
abstract: We present a new ultra high resolution spectral domain polarization sensitive optical coherence tomography (PS-OCT) system based on polarization maintaining (PM) fibers. The method transfers the principles of our previous bulk optic PS-OCT systems to a fiberized setup. The phase shift between the orthogonal polarization states travelling in the two orthogonal modes of the PM fiber is compensated by software in post processing. Thereby, the main advantage of our bulk optics setups, i.e. the use of only a single input polarization state to simultaneously acquire reflectivity, retardation, optic axis orientation, and Stokes vector, is maintained. The use of a broadband light source of 110 nm bandwidth provides improved depth resolution and smaller speckle size. The latter is important for improved resolution of depolarization imaging. We demonstrate our instrument for high-resolution PS-OCT imaging of the healthy human retina.
authors.affiliation: Center for Biomedical Engineering and Physics, Medical University of Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Erich
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Götzinger
authors.forename: Bernhard
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Baumann
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Pircher
authors.forename: Christoph K
authors.initials: CK
authors.lastname: Hitzenberger
mesh_terms: D017076:Computer-Aided Design; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D005336:Fiber Optic Technology / Q000295:instrumentation*; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000295:instrumentation*; D012031:Refractometry / Q000295:instrumentation*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D041623:Tomography, Optical Coherence / Q000295:instrumentation*