The impact of index dips in double clad fibers and endoscopic optical coherence tomography (Conference Presentation)

Abstract

Multipath artifacts in double clad fiber (DCF) based endoscopic optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging systems are investigated and a novel mechanism for artifact generation is proposed. We present evidence that the characteristic image artifacts found in DCF OCT images are partially due to the existence of an index dip within the core of double clad optical fibers. This core dip is shown to affect the modal quality of the light propagating through the core of the DCF, causing additional peaks or ghost images to be generated within the point spread function of the OCT system. Through these investigations we hope to gain a better understanding of how modal artifacts degrade OCT image quality, allowing for the design of more ideal optical fibers which can restore the quality of the OCT imaging domain.