Abstract
OCT instruments permit fast and non-invasive 3D optical biopsies of biological tissues. However, they are bulky and expensive, making them only affordable at the hospital and thus, not sufficiently used as an early diagnostic tool. Significant reduction of system cost and size is achieved by implementation of MOEMS technologies. We propose an active array of 4x4 Mirau microinterferometers where the reference micro-mirrors are carried by a vertical comb-drive microactuator, enabling the implementation of the phase-shifting technique that improves the sensitivity and eliminates unwanted interferometric terms. We focus on the design of the imaging system, the microfabrication and the assembly of the Mirau microinterferometer, and the swept-source OCT imaging.
Highlights
Nowadays, the micromachining technologies are well matching the needs of biomedical applications of modern optical metrology
We focus on the design of the imaging system, the microfabrication and the assembly of the Mirau microinterferometer, and the swept-source Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) imaging
We focus on the implementation of an active and array-type micromachined Mirau microinterferometer for swept-source OCT (SS-OCT) imaging
Summary
The micromachining technologies are well matching the needs of biomedical applications of modern optical metrology. Applications such as micro-spectrometers [1], onchip confocal microscopy [2] and micro-catheters [3] for in-vivo tissue scanning are some examples where potential sensing is increased by using MOEMS (micro-opto-electromechanical systems) technologies. The ability to fabricate micromachined micro-mirrors, scanners and other microoptical elements on the order of several hundreds of micrometers in size has stimulated research into new instrumental applications. An increasing demand allowing the reduction of size and cost as well as several new sensing challenges, such as imaging inside of the human body, have made the miniaturization of interferometric systems an important issue [4,5]
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