Full Range Complex Spectral Domain Optical Coherence Tomography for Volumetric Imaging at 47, 000 A Scans per Second

In this paper, we demonstrate a high speed spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SDOCT) system capable of achieving full range complex imaging at 47 kHz line scan rate. By applying beam-offset method, a constant modulation frequency is introduced into each B-scan that enables reconstruction of the full range complex SDOCT images of in vivo tissue samples. To make use of the full capacity of detection camera used in the system, system control software is developed that streams the raw spectral fringe data directly into the computer memory. In order to assess performance of the high speed full range SDOCT system for imaging biological specimen, we present results imaged from the cuticle of fingernail of a human volunteer in vivo, and from the chicken embryos ex vivo. We also show the high sensitivity advantages of full range complex imaging as compared to the conventional SDOCT. To the best of our knowledge, 47,000 A-scan imaging rate is the highest imaging rate ever been reported for full range complex imaging. Notwithstanding, the method reported here has no limitations on the imaging speed, thus offers a useful tool to achieve volumetric imaging of living samples where the high sensitivity region around zero-delay line in the system can be utilized for imaging.