The Open Optics Journal

2008, 2 : 10-20
Published online 2008 March 28. DOI: 10.2174/1874328500802010010
Publisher ID: TOOPTSJ-2-10

Large Area Full-Field Optical Coherence Tomography and its Applications

Shoude Chang , Sherif Sherif , Youxin Mao and Costel Flueraru
Optics Group, Institute for Microstructural Sciences, National Research Council Canada, 1200 Montreal Road, Ottawa, K1A 0R6, Canada.

ABSTRACT

Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) can perform high resolution, cross-sectional tomographic imaging of the internal structure of materials and biological samples. Most of the OCT systems use fibre probe based technology, in which a 3-axis scanning mechanism is needed. As the fibre output aperture is of the order of a micron, the working area of OCT system is normally about hundreds of squared microns. Working directly on a 2D region, Full-Field OCT (FF-OCT) system has parallel processing ability. Because the size of the image does not pose a serious challenge, FF-OCT can be easily used to image a large working area. This paper discusses system design and implementation for a large area FFOCT. Different applications, 3D intensity imaging, multiple-layer information extraction and fake-fingerprint detection, are described. To further reduce the cost of system and increase and the resolution of depth, FF-OCT system using white light is also introduced.

Keywords:

Full-field optical tomography, optical image processing, 3D imaging.