Extending axial focus of optical coherence tomography using parallel multiple aperture synthesis

• Main Authors: Bo, En, Ge, Xin, Yu, Xiaojun, Mo, Jianhua, Liu, Linbo
• Other Authors: School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering; Aperture Synthesis; Optical Coherence Tomography
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/90098; http://hdl.handle.net/10220/48384
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Compromising the inherent trade-off between transverse resolution and depth of focus (DOF) remains a long-standing issue in optical coherence tomography (OCT). In this work, we report a novel technique—parallel multiple aperture synthesis (pMAS) to simultaneously generate multiple optical apertures in an OCT sample arm by employing a two-surface coated mirror. In the proposed pMAS, the DOF is extended by a factor of 16.49 without sacrificing the transverse resolution for proof-of-concept experiments when multiple distinctive apertures are digitally synthesized. The microparticles and tissue experiments demonstrate the feasibility of pMAS to address the fundamental problem of limited DOF in high-resolution OCT.