Megahertz FDML Laser with up to 143nm Sweep Range for Ultrahigh Resolution OCT at 1050nm

Kolb, Jan Philip; Klein, Thomas; Eibl, Mattias; Pfeiffer, Tom; Wieser, Wolfgang and Huber, Robert (2016): Megahertz FDML Laser with up to 143nm Sweep Range for Ultrahigh Resolution OCT at 1050nm. Optical Coherence Tomography and Coherence Domain Optical Methods in Biomedicine XX, San Francisco, California, United States, 15-17 February 2016. Izatt, Joseph A. (ed.) : In: Optical Coherence Tomography and Coherence Domain Optical Methods in Biomedicine XX : 15-17 February 2016, San Francisco, California, United States, 969703 Bellingham, Washington: SPIE Digital Library.

Abstract

We present a new design of a Fourier Domain Mode Locked laser (FDML laser), which provides a new record in sweep range at similar to 1 mu m center wavelength: At the fundamental sweep rate of 2x417 kHz we reach 143nm bandwidth and 120nm with 4x buffering at 1.67MHz sweep rate. The latter configuration of our system is characterized: The FWHM of the point spread function (PSF) of a mirror is 5.6 mu m (in tissue). Human in vivo retinal imaging is performed with the MHz laser showing more details in vascular structures. Here we could measure an axial resolution of 6.0 mu m by determining the FWHM of specular reflex in the image. Additionally, challenges related to such a high sweep bandwidth such as water absorption are investigated.

• Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item (Report)
• Faculties: Physics
• Subjects: 500 Science > 530 Physics
• ISSN: 0277-786X
• Place of Publication: Bellingham, Washington
• Annotation: Proceedings of SPIE ; 9697
• Language: English