A two- and three-dimensional swept source optical coherence tomography (SS-OCT) system, which uses a ready-to-ship scanning light source, is demonstrated. The light source has a center wavelength of 1.31 mum, -3 dB wavelength range of 110 nm, scanning rate of 20 KHz, and high linearity in frequency scanning. This paper presents a simple calibration method using a fringe analysis technique for spectral rescaling. This SS-OCT system is capable of realtime display of two-dimensional OCT and can obtain three-dimensional OCT with a measurement time of 2 s. In vivo human anterior eye segments are investigated two- and three-dimensionally. The system sensitivity is experimentally determined to be 114 dB. The three-dimensional OCT volumes reveal the structures of the anterior eye segments, which are difficult to observe in two-dimensional OCT images.

We have developed a spectral interferometric optical coherence tomography (OCT) system with polarization sensitivity that is able to measure a two-dimensional tomographic image by means of one-dimensional mechanical scanning. Our system, which has an axial resolution of 32 mum , calculates the distribution of each element of the Müller matrix of a measured object from 16 OCT images. The OCT system successfully reveals the birefringent nature of human skin tissue.

High-speed complex full-range Fourier domain optical coherence tomography (FD-OCT) is demonstrated. In this FD-OCT, the phase modulation of a reference beam (M scan) and transversal scanning (B scan) are simultaneously performed. The Fourier transform method is applied along the direction of the B scan to reconstruct complex spectra, and the complex spectra comprise a full-range OCT image. Because of this simultaneous B-M-mode scan, the FD-OCT requires only a single A scan for each single transversal position to obtain a full-range FD-OCT image. A simple but slow version of the FD-OCT visualizes the cross section of a plastic plate. A modified fast version of this FD-OCT investigates a sweat duct in a finger pad in vivo and visualizes it with an acquisition time of 27 ms.

Abstract:A numerical deconvolution method to cancel lateral defocus in Fourier domain optical coherence tomography (FD-OCT) is presented. This method uses a depth-dependent lateral point spread function and some approximations to design a deconvolution filter for the cancellation of lateral defocus. Improved lateral resolutions are theoretically estimated; consequently, the effect of lateral superresolution in this method is derived. The superresolution is experimentally confirmed by a razor blade test, and an intuitive physical interpretation of this effect is presented. The razor blade test also confirms that this method enhances the signal-to-noise ratio of OCT. This method is applied to OCT images of medical samples, in vivo human anterior eye segments, and exhibits its potential to cancel the defocusing of practical OCT images. The validity and restrictions involved in each approximation employed to design the deconvolution filter are discussed. A chromatic and a two-dimensional extensions of this method are also described.

A high-penetration swept-source optical coherence tomography (HP-SS-OCT) system based on a 1-μm short cavity laser is developed. Doppler OCT processing is applied, along with a custom-made numerical phase stabilization algorithm; this process does not require additional calibration hardware. Thus, our phase stabilization method is simple and can be employed in a variety of SS-OCT systems. The bidirectional blood flow and vasculature in the deep choroid was successfully imaged via two Doppler modes that use different time intervals for Doppler processing. En face projection image of squared power of Doppler shift is compared to ICGA, and the utility of our method is verified.