High-speed optical coherence tomography by circular interferometric ranging

Existing three-dimensional optical imaging methods excel in controlled environments but are difficult to deploy over large, irregular and dynamic fields. This has limited imaging in areas such as material inspection and medicine. To better address these applications, we developed methods in optical coherence tomography (OCT) to efficiently interrogate sparse scattering fields, i.e., those in which most locations (voxels) do not generate meaningful signal. Frequency comb sources are used to superimpose reflected signals from equispaced locations through optical subsampling. This results in circular ranging, and reduces the number of measurements required to interrogate large volumetric fields. As a result, signal acquisition barriers that have limited speed and field in OCT are avoided. With a new ultrafast, time-stretched frequency comb laser design operating with 7.6 MHz to 18.9 MHz repetition rates, we achieved imaging of multi-cm³ fields at up to 7.5 volumes per second.