Ultra-high-speed optical coherence tomography with a stretched pulse supercontinuum source

We introduce a new high-speed Fourier- domain optical coherence tomography ( FD-OCT) scheme based on a stretched pulse supercontinuum source. A wide-band short pulse of a supercontinuum source of which output spectrum spanned a wavelength range from 1,200 nm to 1,550 nm was stretched to a long pulse of 70-ns duration by using a dispersive fiber due to the group-velocity dispersion, and it was used directly as frequency-swept light for FD-OCT. The OCT spectral interferogram was acquired in the time domain and converted into the spectral domain by the pre-calibrated time-to-wavelength relation. Using this stretched-pulse OCT ( SP-OCT) scheme, we have demonstrated an ultra-high-speed axial-line scanning rate of 5 MHz. The axial resolution of 8 mu m was achieved without re-calibration of the sweep characteristic owing to the passive nature of the frequency-sweeping mechanism. (c) 2006 Optical Society of America.