Sine-modulated wavelength-independent full-range complex spectral optical coherence tomography with an ultra-broadband light source

Abstract

We present a full-range complex spectral domain optical coherence tomography with an ultra-broadband light source based on sinusoidal modulation. For the sinusoidal modulation strategy, a lead zirconate titanate stack actuator is employed to achieve the sinusoidal vibration of a mirror and therefore to get a series of spectral interferogram with different phase delays. The purpose of this strategy is to get higher performance complex-conjugate artifact elimination. Bessel separation of the signal sequence at each wavelength of the spectrometer was used to reconstruct the real and imaginary components of interference fringes; however, the sinusoidal modulation method is independent of light source wavelength. The experimental results demonstrated that the method had an excellent performance in a complex-conjugate suppression of 50 dB for a full width at half maximum bandwidth of 236 nm, and it has better anti-artifact ability and more flexible range in phase shifting than the conventional wavelength-dependent phase-shifting method on a full-range complex spectral optical coherence tomography system. Furthermore, the effect of the hysteresis error of lead zirconate titanate actuators on the performance of complex-conjugate artifact elimination was investigated and the solution of lead zirconate titanate positioning performance for both conventional phase-shifting and sine-modulation methods was suggested.