Fourier domain optical coherence tomography employing a swept multi-wavelength laser and a multi-channel receiver
First Claim
1. An optical coherence tomography (OCT) system comprising;
- a light source generating light at a plurality of discrete wavelengths simultaneously, said light source being tunable to scan said plurality of discrete wavelengths across a range of wavelengths to generate a plurality of scans of different spectral regions in parallel over time;
a beam splitter for dividing the light along a sample and a reference path;
a detector for receiving light returned from both the sample and the reference paths and having a plurality of channels, each channel arranged to measure light within one of said different spectral regions and to simultaneously generate output signals in response to said discrete scanned wavelengths; and
a processor for analyzing the output signals to derive a reflectance distribution along the sample path.
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Abstract
The present invention is an alternative Fourier domain optical coherence system (FD-OCT) and its associated method. The system comprises a swept multi-wavelength laser, an optical interferometer and a multi-channel receiver. By employing a multi-wavelength laser, the sweeping range for each lasing wavelength is substantially reduced as compared to a pure swept single wavelength laser that needs to cover the same overall spectral range. The overall spectral interferogram is divided over the individual channels of the multi-channel receiver and can be re-constructed through processing of the data from each channel detector. In addition to a substantial increase in the speed of each axial scan, the cost of invented FD-OCT system can also be substantially less than that of a pure swept source OCT or a pure spectral domain OCT system.
287 Citations
32 Claims
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1. An optical coherence tomography (OCT) system comprising;
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a light source generating light at a plurality of discrete wavelengths simultaneously, said light source being tunable to scan said plurality of discrete wavelengths across a range of wavelengths to generate a plurality of scans of different spectral regions in parallel over time; a beam splitter for dividing the light along a sample and a reference path; a detector for receiving light returned from both the sample and the reference paths and having a plurality of channels, each channel arranged to measure light within one of said different spectral regions and to simultaneously generate output signals in response to said discrete scanned wavelengths; and a processor for analyzing the output signals to derive a reflectance distribution along the sample path. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 31)
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19. A method of analyzing a sample using optical coherence tomography (OCT) comprising the steps of:
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generating a light output having plurality of discrete wavelengths; scanning each discrete wavelength across a range of optical wavelengths to generate a plurality of scans of different spectral regions in parallel over time; splitting the light along a sample and a reference path; combining the light received back from both sample and reference paths; separating the received light into said different spectral regions; simultaneously measuring each of the different spectral regions during the scanning step; and analyzing the measurements to derive a reflectance distribution along the sample path. - View Dependent Claims (20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26)
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27. An optical coherence tomography (OCT) system comprising:
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a light source generating light at least ten discrete wavelengths simultaneously, said light source being tunable to scan said plurality of discrete wavelengths across a range of wavelengths to generate a plurality of scans of different spectral regions in parallel over time and wherein the scanning range of each discrete wavelength is at least 1.0 nanometers; a beam splitter for dividing the light along a sample and a reference path; a detector for receiving light returned from both the sample and the reference paths and having a plurality of channels, each channel arranged to measure light within one of said different spectral regions and to simultaneously generate output signals in response to said discrete scanned wavelengths; and a processor synchronized with the tuning of the light source for analyzing the generated output signals to derive a reflectance distribution along the sample path. - View Dependent Claims (28, 29, 30, 32)
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Specification