Spectral Shaping in Rapid Scanning Optical Delay Line of Optical Coherence Tomography

A small spatial optical filter is put into the rapid-scanning optical delay line (RSOD) to shape the spectrum of the reference beam in optical coherence tomography (OCT). The experimental results show that the longitudinal resolution can be improved by a factor of 81% with this method, while at the same time, the signal-to-noise ratio of the OCT system is not much affected. This method can be used in OCT systems that use RSOD as the reference arm with a light source of superluminescent diodes, femtosecond lasers and crystal fibre as well.