Abstract
Optical-domain subsampling enables Fourier-domain OCT imaging at high-speeds and extended depth ranges while limiting the required acquisition bandwidth. To perform optical-domain subsampling, a wavelength-stepped rather than a wavelength-swept source is required. This preliminary study introduces a novel design for a rapid wavelength-stepped laser source that uses dispersive fibers in combination with a fast lithium-niobate modulator to achieve wavelength selection. A laser with 200 GHz wavelength-stepping and a sweep rate of 9 MHz over a 94 nm range at a center wavelength of 1550 nm is demonstrated. A reconfiguration of this source design to a continuous wavelength-swept light for conventional Fourier-domain OCT is also demonstrated.
Highlights
Many technologies have been used to build high-speed swept-wavelength sources for optical coherence tomography (OCT) [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16]
A wavelength-stepped laser was constructed by incorporating a FabryPerot (FP) etalon into a relatively slow polygon-filter based laser. While this source was sufficient to demonstrate the principle of optical-domain subsampling in OCT, significantly faster wavelength-swept lasers are needed to take full advantage of the subsampling approach
We demonstrate a novel design for a wavelength-stepped laser for opticaldomain subsampled OCT
Summary
Many technologies have been used to build high-speed swept-wavelength sources for optical coherence tomography (OCT) [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16]. For some very high speed and long range imaging sources, impractical receiver bandwidths are required To address this challenge, we have recently described optical-domain subsampled OCT as a method for passively reducing acquisition and data transfer bandwidth [12]. A wavelength-stepped laser was constructed by incorporating a FabryPerot (FP) etalon into a relatively slow polygon-filter based laser While this source was sufficient to demonstrate the principle of optical-domain subsampling in OCT, significantly faster wavelength-swept lasers are needed to take full advantage of the subsampling approach. A continuous wavelength-swept source with 87 nm bandwidth and a coherence length (double-pass) exceeding 1.75 mm is presented This configuration operates at the same 9 MHz sweep rate as the subsampled configuration. The performance of the laser for both wavelength-stepped and wavelength-swept configurations is summarized (section 4)
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