Design, implementation, and characterization of spectrometer-based spectral domain optical coherence tomography

Abstract

We report the implementation of a high speed and high resolution spectrometer-based spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) system. A high speed near-infrared spectrometer was designed and built, utilizing a high speed line-array CMOS detector and all off-the-shelf optical components. The acquisition speed of more than 100,000 spectra per second was achieved, enabling a high speed 3D imaging of the implemented SD-OCT system. Here, we report the performance characterization, i.e. resolution, imaging depth, and sensitivity of the implemented system. The penetration depth and depth resolution of the system are currently 2 mm and 14.1 µm, respectively. The lateral resolution of the system was quantified by the Modulation transfer function (MTF) measurement to be about 15.5 µm. over the lateral field-of-view (x-y axes) of 30 mm × 30 mm. The acquisition speed of the system was 20 frames per second.Keyword -near-infrared spectrometer, optical spectrometer design, spectral resolution, 3D imaging, noninvasive imaging, frequency domain optical coherence tomography