Abstract

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is an emerging technology for micron-scale cross-sectional imaging of biological tissue and materials. OCT is analogous to ultrasound except that it uses low coherence light instead of sound waves.¹ High resolution detection of reflected or backscattered light is performed using low coherence interferometry. One of the key problems in OCT has been the lack of compact, high performance, low coherence light sources with sufficient bandwidth and power to enable high resolution, real time imaging. Compact, diode pumped solid state lasers can generate femtosecond pulses, but do not have sufficient bandwidths for high resolution imaging. High nonlinearity, air-silica microstructure fibers² or tapered fibers³ can generate an extremely broadband continuum using low energy femtosecond pulses. These high nonlinearities are achieved by the anomalous dispersion characteristics of the fibers, which shift the zero dispersion to shorter wavelengths, and the small core diameters which provide tight mode confinement.

© 2002 Optical Society of America