Abstract

We present the new advances in full field optical coherence microscopy, an alternative method to conventional optical coherence tomography (OCT). The experimental setup is based on Linnik interferometer illuminated with a tungsten halogen lamp. <i>En face</i> tomographic images are obtained in real-time without scanning by computing the difference of two phase-opposed interferometric images recorded by a high-resolution CCD camera. The short coherence length of the source and the compensation of dispersion mismatch in the interferometer arms yield an optical sectioning ability with 0.8 &mu;m resolution in water. Transverse resolution of 1.0 &mu;m is achieved by using microscope objectives with a numerical aperture of 0.5. A shot-noise limited detection sensitivity of 86 dB can be reached with 2 s acquisition time. High-resolution images of the anterior segment of the rat eye are shown.

Highlights

  • Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a well-established optical imaging technique with micrometer-scale resolution

  • FF-Optical Coherence Microscopy (OCM) is an alternative technique to conventional scanning OCM that provides ultrahighresolution images using a simple tungsten-halogen lamp, instead of a sophisticated laserbased source

  • With a spatial resolution approaching that of microscopy, this technology has the potential to replace conventional methods used for histology

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Summary

Introduction

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a well-established optical imaging technique with micrometer-scale resolution. OCT is based on low-coherence interferometry to measure the amplitude of light backscattered by the sample being imaged [1,2,3,4]. Optical Coherence Microscopy (OCM) is an OCT technique where high numerical aperture optics are used to achieve higher transverse spatial resolution. Sometimes termed Full-Field Optical Coherence Tomography (FF-OCT), Full-Field Optical Coherence Microscopy (FFOCM) is an alternative technique to scanning OCM, based on white-light interference microscopy [16,17,18]. FF-OCM produces tomographic images in the en face orientation by arithmetic combination of interferometric images acquired with an area camera and by illuminating the whole field of view using a low-coherence light source [19,20,21,22,23]. A few images of biological samples are shown to illustrate the imaging capabilities

Instrumentation
Principle of operation
Detection sensitivity
Wavelength and imaging penetration depth
Axial resolution
Transverse resolution
Sample motion artifacts
Loss of signal
Spurious signal
Illustration of imaging capabilities
Findings
Conclusion

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