Shot-noise limited, supercontinuum-based optical coherence tomography

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

Documents

  • Fulltext

    Final published version, 3.62 MB, PDF document

  • Shreesha Rao D. S
  • Mikkel Jensen
  • Lars Grüner-Nielsen
  • Jesper Toft Olsen
  • Peter Heiduschka
  • Björn Kemper
  • Jürgen Schnekenburger
  • Martin Glud
  • Mogensen, Mette
  • Niels Møller Israelsen
  • Ole Bang

We present the first demonstration of shot-noise limited supercontinuum-based spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) with an axial resolution of 5.9 μm at a center wavelength of 1370 nm. Current supercontinuum-based SD-OCT systems cannot be operated in the shot-noise limited detection regime because of severe pulse-to-pulse relative intensity noise of the supercontinuum source. To overcome this disadvantage, we have developed a low-noise supercontinuum source based on an all-normal dispersion (ANDi) fiber, pumped by a femtosecond laser. The noise performance of our 90 MHz ANDi fiber-based supercontinuum source is compared to that of two commercial sources operating at 80 and 320 MHz repetition rate. We show that the low-noise of the ANDi fiber-based supercontinuum source improves the OCT images significantly in terms of both higher contrast, better sensitivity, and improved penetration. From SD-OCT imaging of skin, retina, and multilayer stacks we conclude that supercontinuum-based SD-OCT can enter the domain of shot-noise limited detection.

Original languageEnglish
Article number133
JournalLight: Science and Applications
Volume10
Issue number1
ISSN2095-5545
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Author(s).

ID: 302460257