Fourier domain optical coherence tomography for retinal imaging with 800-NM swept source: Real-time resampling in k-domain

Abstract

In this study, we demonstrated Fourier-domain/swept-source optical coherence tomography (FD/SS-OCT) at a center wavelength of 800 nm for in vivo human retinal imaging. A wavelength-swept source was constructed with a semiconductor optical amplifier, a fiber Fabry-Perot tunable filter, isolators, and a fiber coupler in a ring cavity. Our swept source produced a laser output with a tuning range of 42 nm (779 to 821 nm) and an average power of 3.9 mW. The wavelength-swept speed in this configuration with bidirectionality is 2,000 axial scans per second. In addition, we suggested a modified zero-crossing method to achieve equal sample spacing in the wavenumber (k) domain and to increase the image depth range. FD/SS-OCT has a sensitivity of ~89.7 dB and an axial resolution of 10.4 μm in air. When a retinal image with 2,000 A-lines/frame is obtained, an acquisition speed of 2.0 fps is achieved.