Publication Date:
2021-10-26
Description:
Photonic integrated circuits (PIC) provide promising functionalities to significantly reduce the size and costs of optical coherence tomography (OCT) systems. This paper presents an imaging platform operating at a center wavelength of 830 nm for ophthalmic application using PIC-based swept source OCT. An on-chip Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI) configuration, which comprises an input power splitter, polarization beam splitters in the sample and the reference arm, and a 50/50 coupler for signal interference represents the core element of the system with a footprint of only $$(12 imes 5);{ext {mm}}^2$$ ( 12 × 5 ) mm 2 . The system achieves 94 dB imaging sensitivity with 750 $$upmu $$ μ W on the sample, 50 kHz imaging speed and 5.5 $$upmu $$ μ m axial resolution (in soft tissue). With this setup, in vivo human retinal imaging of healthy subjects was performed producing B-scans, three-dimensional renderings as well as OCT angiography. These promising results are significant prerequisites for further integration of optical and electronic building blocks on a single swept source-OCT PIC.
Electronic ISSN:
2045-2322
Topics:
Natural Sciences in General
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