Abstract
In this paper, we present a novel concept for a multi-channel swept source optical coherence tomography (OCT) system based on photonic integrated circuits (PICs). At the core of this concept is a low-loss polarization dependent path routing approach allowing for lower excess loss compared to previously shown PIC-based OCT systems, facilitating a parallelization of measurement units. As a proof of concept for the low-loss path routing, a silicon nitride PIC-based single-channel swept source OCT system operating at 840 nm was implemented and used to acquire in-vivo tomograms of a human retina. The fabrication of the PIC was done via CMOS-compatible plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition to allow future monolithic co-integration with photodiodes and read-out electronics. A performance analysis using the results of the implemented photonic building blocks shows a potential tenfold increase of the acquisition speed for a multi-channel system compared to an ideal lossless single-channel system with the same signal-to-noise ratio.
Highlights
Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is an imaging technique able to visualize the layer composition in a sample by interfering low-amplitude light reflected from the layer boundaries with a reference light [1, 2]
In this paper, we present a novel concept for a multi-channel swept source optical coherence tomography (OCT) system based on photonic integrated circuits (PICs)
We have presented a concept for a low-loss PIC-based multi-channel swept source (SS)-OCT system utilizing the intrinsic advantages of PICs such as high integration density and mechanical stability enabling parallelization
Summary
Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is an imaging technique able to visualize the layer composition in a sample by interfering low-amplitude light reflected from the layer boundaries with a reference light [1, 2]. The high integration density has been exploited to some degree in the implementation of an OCT receiver [9] allowing balanced detection, polarization sensitive and/or polarization diversity measurements Another approach to capitalize on these strengths for OCT is the parallelization of measurements employing multiple light spots emitted from the PIC probing a sample. No balanced detection can be used, which causes a high unbalanced relative intensity noise characteristic of SS-OCT [2] Another downside of this implementation is the fact that the cascade of 1 × 2 splitters is used to recombine the signal in the optical return path, which induces significant excess loss. On the basis of these results we provide an in-depth performance analysis of a multi-channel implementation
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