Single-camera polarization-sensitive full-field optical coherence tomography with polarization switch

Kwan Seob Park,Byeong Ha Lee,Tae Joong Eom,Woo June Choi

doi:10.1117/1.jbo.18.10.100504

Abstract

We present a single-channel detection-based polarization-sensitive full-field optical coherence tomography (PS-FF-OCT) for simultaneous acquisition of high-resolution OCT and linear retardance images. A linearly polarized sub-10-fs laser was used as a broadband light source for the OCT system. A bi-stable polarization switching device, composed of a ferroelectric liquid crystal cell and an analyzer, was employed to get the horizontal and the vertical polarization components of a full-field interference signal. The time-switched two perpendicular interference signals were sequentially recorded by a single charge-coupled device camera, then processed to extract en-face functional images of a biological sample. The rat tail tendon was imaged ex vivo to confirm the imaging feasibility of the proposed system, which showed axial and transverse resolutions of 2 and 1.3 μm, respectively.

Highlights

We present a single-channel detection-based polarization-sensitive full-field optical coherence tomography (PS-FF-OCT) for simultaneous acquisition of high-resolution OCT and linear retardance images
We propose a single-channel detection scheme of PS-FF-OCT
Most of the previously reported single-channel Polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography (PS-OCT) were based on fiber-scanning OCT techniques,[9,10,11,12] in which a one-dimensional line charge-coupled device (CCD) camera, not a two-dimensional area CCD camera, was used

Summary

Introduction

We present a single-channel detection-based polarization-sensitive full-field optical coherence tomography (PS-FF-OCT) for simultaneous acquisition of high-resolution OCT and linear retardance images. Previous studies on PS-FF-OCT, used two identical charge-coupled device (CCD) cameras as detectors to get two perpendicularly polarized interference images. To get the full-field interference images in both polarization states with a single CCD camera, a bi-stable polarization switching (BSPS) device was implemented, which consists of a ferroelectric liquid crystal (FLC) cell and a linear polarizer or a polarizing optics.[13] Typically, the standard FLC cell is fabricated as a half-wave retarder,[14] which causes chromatic or phase errors in broadband applications.

Results

Conclusion