A swept source OCT at 1300 nm with angular compounding for art and archaeological conservation

Abstract

We have assembled a swept source optical coherence tomography (OCT) system for use in Art & Archaeological Conservation. The system is illuminated by an in-house swept source with a central wavelength of 1300 nm. This system includes dedicated optics to allow for angular averaging for speckle noise reduction. We demonstrate that the averaging produces significant improvements in speckle SNR in art and archaeological type objects and allows easier identification of features. We further demonstrate that there is practically no loss of axial resolution.

Optical Coherence Tomography: its role in the non-invasive structural examination and conservation of cultural heritage objects—a review

“…Taking note of our overview of the important parameters given above, the reader is directed to these publications. Among those devoted to examination of cultural heritage objects, the most comprehensive description of TdOCT instruments may be found in [13][14][15][16][17], of SdOCT systems in [7,18], and of SSOCT in [17,[19][20][21]. Solutions for FullField OCT with the Mireau interferometer are discussed in [22][23][24], and with the Linnik configuration of a Michelson interferometer in [25].…”