Master–slave interferometry for parallel spectral domain interferometry sensing and versatile 3D optical coherence tomography

Abstract

Conventional spectral domain interferometry (SDI) methods suffer from the need of data linearization. When applied to optical coherence tomography (OCT), conventional SDI methods are limited in their 3D capability, as they cannot deliver direct en-face cuts. Here we introduce a novel SDI method, which eliminates these disadvantages. We denote this method as Master - Slave Interferometry (MSI), because a signal is acquired by a slave interferometer for an optical path difference (OPD) value determined by a master interferometer. The MSI method radically changes the main building block of an SDI sensor and of a spectral domain OCT set-up. The serially provided signal in conventional technology is replaced by multiple signals, a signal for each OPD point in the object investigated. This opens novel avenues in parallel sensing and in parallelization of signal processing in 3D-OCT, with applications in high- resolution medical imaging and microscopy investigation of biosamples. Eliminating the need of linearization leads to lower cost OCT systems and opens potential avenues in increasing the speed of production of en-face OCT images in comparison with conventional SDI.