Estimation and compensation of phase errors induced by axial bulk motion of a sample in wavelength-sweeping parallel Fourier domain OCT.

Abstract

We report a new, to the best of our knowledge, approach to correct image blurring due to the axial bulk motion of a sample in wavelength-sweeping Fourier domain parallel optical coherence tomography (OCT). This approach can estimate phase errors changing rapidly in time through direct measurements of the apparent axial shift during the sampling interval using common phase changes in parallel detection without additional hardware. To demonstrate the performance of the proposed algorithm, a single reflection and scattering sample were imaged with wavelength-sweeping parallel OCT implemented by scanning a spectrally dispersed line-field along the line direction. In addition, we quantitatively demonstrated that even a small axial movement of the sample could cause serious image blur at a high nonlinear degree of movement.