Research On Spectral Domain Optical Coherence Tomography And Its Applications

Optical Coherence Tomography(OCT) is a new cross-sectional imaging technique in recent 20 years with the advantages of high resolution, non-contact and no damage. OCT has been paid widespread attention since it was introduced. Time domain OCT(TD-OCT) is the first generation of OCT. TD-OCT realize axial scanning via controlling the movement of reference arm mirror, which greatly slower imaging speed of OCT and introduce scanning noise into the system. This disadvantage limits the usage of TD-OCT. Spectral domain OCT(SD-OCT) is an important branch of OCT. SD-OCT is a kind of Fourier domain OCT( FDOCT), which is the second generation of OCT. SD-OCT avoids mechanical axial scans in the reference arm via introducing fast spectrometer and fast Fourier transform(FFT), and overcomes the shortcomings of slow imaging of TD-OCT, and improves the sensitivity and dynamic range. Now SD-OCT becomes research focus in many fields especially in the biomedical field.There are many kinds of functional OCTs. Such as Optical Coherence Elastography(OCE),which is based on stress, strain,Young modulus and shear modulus. In addition, OCE not only has high resolution,the same as OCT,but also can analysis Elasticity contrast,which makes OCE improve its resolution from micron level to nanometer level.First, this paper introduces the development, advantages and disadvantages and a variety of applications of OCT. We also state the the basic principle and relevant parameters of OCT. Second, we introduce the system composition and material selection of every part and structure. Then we analyze the noises existing in the SD- OCT system and measure and assess its parameter and performance via experiments of mirror, cover glass and biological tissue samples. At last, we simply introduce the development,principle and applications of the optical coherence elasticity imaging.Then prove the feasibility of phase-sensitive OCE via an experiment.