Feature Of The Week 9/30/12: UCLA Researchers Demonstrate High Throughput OCT Operating at Record Axial Scan Rate of Nearly 100 MHz in the 800 nm Spectral Range
High-speed image acquisition in OCT is desirable as it is immune to motion artifacts and can be used to inspect a large field of view or a large number of parts in a short period of time. A group of researchers led by Keisuke Goda and Bahram Jalali at UCLA recently proposed and demonstrated high-throughput OCT that offers 1,000 times higher axial scan rate than conventional OCT in the 800 nm spectral range. This is made possible by employing photonic time-stretch for chirping a pulse train and transforming it into a passive swept source that operates at the sweep rate equivalent to the pulse repetition rate. Consequently, it enabled a record high axial scan rate of nearly 100 MHz. To show the utility of their method, they also demonstrated real-time observation of laser ablation dynamics with axial and lateral scan rates of 91 MHz and 50 kHz, respectively. Their method is expected to be useful for industrial applications where the speed of conventional OCT falls short, such as material characterization, microfluidics, and manufacturing and process control.
For more information see recent Article. Courtesy of Keisuke Goda from the University of California, Los Angeles.
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