Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is an optical method to measure or image the distance of a reflecting layer such as a mirror or also weakly scattering particles in human skin (add some example or link). Different OCT configurations do exist (name some). One of the earliest used forms is time-domain OCT which uses a mechanical scanning system to scan over the measurement or imaging distance. Fast scanning is achieved with an oscillating scanning reference mirror (SRM), but then the scanning distance is just around 100 micrometre. Such a small scanning distance is not very useful, and modern OCT systems can achieve up to 3 millimetres in human skin or the retina of the human eye. Modern OCT systems are still costly, and the time-domain configuration has some potential to provide a low-cost solution for particular imaging applications.

A general idea of multiple reference optical coherence tomography (MR-OCT) is to enhance the scanning range up to 2 millimetres with only one additional partial mirror. Because OCT is based on the Michelson interferometer (other interferometric methods are also possible), the scanning range can be increased by simply adding the partial mirror in the reference arm. The general idea is shown in the image below.

In principle, MR-OCT is a unique time-domain OCT configuration. The scanning reference mirror (SRM) ... [add more text]

Multiple reference optical coherence tomography simulation

Related to

K. Neuhaus, “The multi-spectral signal properties of multiple reference optical coherence tomography,” PhD Thesis, NUI Galway, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10379/15318