Abstract
A novel dual beam Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) instrument has been developed for high velocity flow measurement, principally in microfluidics applications. The scanned dual beam approach creates a pair of image-frames separated by a small spatiotemporal offset. Metre-per-second flow measurement is achieved by rapid re-imaging by the second beam allowing for particle tracking between each image-frame of the pair. Flow at 1.06 m/s using a single optical access port has been measured, more than two orders of magnitude larger than previously reported OCT systems, at centimetre depth and with millimetre scale depth of field within a microfluidic chip, whilst simultaneously imaging the microfluidic channel structure.
Highlights
Microfluidics is an increasingly significant research area, recognised as a key enabling technology across a broad range of applications [1,2]
3-dimensional 3-component (3D-3C) microfluidic-velocimetry techniques such as Tomographic μPIV and micro-3-dimensional Particle Tracking Velocimetry (μ3D-PTV) [7,11] has been demonstrated, which can in principle measure 3-component velocity information in 3-dimensions at metre-per-second velocities
We have demonstrated measurements of microchannel flow with peak velocities of 1.06 m/s
Summary
Microfluidics is an increasingly significant research area, recognised as a key enabling technology across a broad range of applications [1,2]. 3-dimensional 3-component (3D-3C) microfluidic-velocimetry techniques such as Tomographic μPIV and micro-3-dimensional Particle Tracking Velocimetry (μ3D-PTV) [7,11] has been demonstrated, which can in principle measure 3-component velocity information in 3-dimensions at metre-per-second velocities These techniques suffer from a number of limitations: they require optical access ports on multiple axis surrounding the microfluidic chip [9,11]; the measured velocities are difficult to calibrate [2,11]; and it can be difficult to locate the velocity measurement within the microfluidic chip as they cannot simultaneously image the flow and the structure of the microfluidic channel [12]. This system operates in the normal OCT mode, not the Doppler mode
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