title: Low-cost hand-held probe for depth-resolved low-coherence interferometry.
abstract: We report on the development of a low-cost hand-held low-coherence interferometric imaging system based on the principle of linear optical coherence tomography (Linear OCT), a technique which was first proposed in the early 2000s as a simpler alternative to the conventional time-domain and Fourier-domain OCT. A bench-top implementation of the proposed technique is first presented and validated. The axial resolution, SNR, and sensitivity roll-of of the system was estimated to be 5.2μm and 80 dB, and 3.7 dB over a depth of 0.15 mm, respectively. After validating the bench-top system, two hand-held probe implementations for contact-based imaging andin vivohuman tympanic membrane imaging are presented. The performance of the proposed system was compared with a research-grade state-of-the-art Fourier-domain low coherence interferometry (LCI) system by imaging several biological and non-biological samples. The results of this study suggest that the proposed system might be a suitable choice for applications where imaging depth and SNR can be traded for lower cost and simpler optical design.
authors.affiliation: Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA.
authors.forename: Paritosh
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Pande
authors.affiliation: Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA.
authors.forename: Ryan L
authors.initials: RL
authors.lastname: Shelton
authors.affiliation: Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA; Department of Bioengineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA.
authors.forename: Guillermo L
authors.initials: GL
authors.lastname: Monroy
authors.affiliation: Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA.
authors.forename: Ryan M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Nolan
authors.affiliation: Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA; Department of Bioengineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA; Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA; Department of Internal Medicine, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA.
authors.forename: Stephen A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Boppart
keywords: (110.3175) Interferometric imaging; (170.0110) Imaging systems; (170.4500) Optical coherence tomography