Abstract
Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a powerful three-dimensional (3D) imaging modality with micrometer-scale axial resolution and up to multi-GigaVoxel/s imaging speed. However, the imaging range of high-speed OCT has been limited. Here, we report 3D OCT over cubic meter volumes using a long coherence length, 1310 nm vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser and silicon photonic integrated circuit dual-quadrature receiver technology combined with enhanced signal processing. We achieved 15 µm depth resolution for tomographic imaging at a 100 kHz axial scan rate over a 1.5 m range. We show 3D macroscopic imaging examples of a human mannequin, bicycle, machine shop gauge blocks, and a human skull/brain model. High-bandwidth, meter-range OCT demonstrates new capabilities that promise to enable a wide range of biomedical, scientific, industrial, and research applications.
Highlights
With over 100 million cumulative clinical imaging procedures performed in ophthalmology and the technology gaining increasing acceptance in cardiology, dermatology, and gastroenterology, optical coherence tomography (OCT) is becoming an increasingly important tool for micrometer-resolution three-dimensional (3D) sub-surface imaging [1,2,3,4]
We demonstrate 3D macroscopic imaging at a 100 kHz axial scan rate with 15 μm depth resolution, near-shotnoise-limited sensitivity, sub-surface tomographic imaging, and a meter-scale imaging range
in-phase and quadrature (IQ) processing [Fig. 2(c)] doubled the imaging range to ~1.5 m, which was limited by the oscilloscope RF bandwidth and not by the vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) coherence length or the photonic integrated circuit (PIC) receiver
Summary
With over 100 million cumulative clinical imaging procedures performed in ophthalmology and the technology gaining increasing acceptance in cardiology, dermatology, and gastroenterology, optical coherence tomography (OCT) is becoming an increasingly important tool for micrometer-resolution three-dimensional (3D) sub-surface imaging [1,2,3,4]. The imaging range of Fourier-domain OCT has been limited to a few centimeters [4,10,11], thereby restricting its applications. We demonstrate 3D macroscopic imaging at a 100 kHz axial scan rate with 15 μm depth resolution, near-shotnoise-limited sensitivity, sub-surface tomographic imaging, and a meter-scale imaging range for ranging applications. This makes OCT a new macroscopic 3D imaging and ranging method alternative to other demonstrated technologies, such as laser triangulation [12,13], time of flight [14], single-pixel detector [15], and structured illumination (or modulated imaging) [16,17]. We demonstrate macroscopic imaging with applications to machine vision, 3D documentation, precision measurement, and non-destructive evaluation of materials
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