Abstract
We analyze the resolution limit that can be achieved by means of spectral reshaping in optical coherence tomography images and demonstrate that the resolution can be improved by means of modelessly reshaping the source spectrum in postprocessing. We show that the optimal spectrum has a priori surprising "crater-like" shape, providing 0.74 micron axial resolution in free space. This represents ~50% improvement compared to resolution using the original spectrum of a white light lamp.
Highlights
Optical coherence tomography is a promising non-invasive in vivo imaging technique, which has undergone rapid development since its invention in 1991 [1,2]
In an OCT system, the axial resolution is determined by the temporal coherence length lc of a light source
Resolution can be improved by combining multiple light sources, e.g. after optimizing the power ratios of three LEDs, resolution in OCT images was improved from 12 μm to 7 μm [8]
Summary
Optical coherence tomography is a promising non-invasive in vivo imaging technique, which has undergone rapid development since its invention in 1991 [1,2]. In an OCT system, the axial resolution is determined by the temporal coherence length lc of a light source. If the spectrum of the light source has a Gaussian shape, lc is proportional to λ02/Δλ with λ0 the. A Kerr-lens mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser [3], Ti:sapphire pumped super-continuum [4,5], and thermal light sources [6,7] were used to obtain 3.7 [3], 0.5 [4], ~1 [5], 0.7 [6], and ~1 μm [7] axial resolution in biological tissue, respectively. By digitally reshaping the source spectra to known modes, such as Gaussian, white, and Hamming windowed shapes, OCT resolution was enhanced from over 10 to a few microns [9,10,11]. A modeless spectral reshaping, in which a spectral profile can be changed to any arbitrary shape, was used to effectively reduce sidelobes of in OCT images [12]
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