Abstract
Optical coherence tomography (OCT) has become one of the most successful optical technologies implemented in medicine and clinical practice mostly due to the possibility of non-invasive and non-contact imaging by detecting back-scattered light. OCT has gone through a tremendous development over the past 25 years. From its initial inception in 1991 [Science254, 1178 (1991)] it has become an indispensable medical imaging technology in ophthalmology. Also in fields like cardiology and gastro-enterology the technology is envisioned to become a standard of care. A key contributor to the success of OCT has been the sensitivity and speed advantage offered by Fourier domain OCT. In this review paper the development of FD-OCT will be revisited, providing a single comprehensive framework to derive the sensitivity advantage of both SD- and SS-OCT. We point out the key aspects of the physics and the technology that has enabled a more than 2 orders of magnitude increase in sensitivity, and as a consequence an increase in the imaging speed without loss of image quality. This speed increase provided a paradigm shift from point sampling to comprehensive 3D in vivo imaging, whose clinical impact is still actively explored by a large number of researchers worldwide.
Highlights
Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is analogous to ultrasound imaging, where a sound pulse is launched and the reflections are measured to create an image of tissue
Fourier domain Optical coherence tomography (OCT) detection can in principle be performed in two ways: either by using a spectrometer or by using a rapidly tunable laser
In this paper we present a general overview of the basics of Fourier Domain OCT method and its main advantage of sensitivity improvement, enabling the rapid acquisition rates that are necessary to reduce motion artifacts in vivo
Summary
Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is analogous to ultrasound imaging, where a sound pulse is launched and the reflections (echoes) are measured to create an image of tissue. For SS-OCT the integration time τ i needs to be replaced by Δt , the single detector sampling time, where during time interval Δt the detector detects an optical bandwidth δ k This results in a spectral interference signal term for SD-OCT, ISD (k ) , per spectral detector element for a reflecting surface at location zr expressed in electron charge given by [14,15], ISD (k ). The RIN noise term is proportional to τ coh / τ i and τ coh / Δt for SD- and SS-OCT, respectively, and is given assuming a thermal light source, for which the inverse optical bandwidth per detection element can been expressed by the coherence time as [42], τ coh 1 δν. In case of shot noise limited detection, i.e., σ2 shot
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