Combined tunable filters based swept laser source for optical coherence tomography

Minghui Chen; Zhihua Ding; Cheng Wang; Yimei Huang; Rong Chen; Chengli Song

doi:10.1117/12.2006002

20 March 2013 Combined tunable filters based swept laser source for optical coherence tomography

Minghui Chen, Zhihua Ding, Cheng Wang, Yimei Huang, Rong Chen, Chengli Song

Proceedings Volume 8571, Optical Coherence Tomography and Coherence Domain Optical Methods in Biomedicine XVII; 85712W (2013) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2006002
Event: SPIE BiOS, 2013, San Francisco, California, United States

Abstract

We demonstrate a novel ultra-broad tunable bandwidth and narrow instantaneous line-width swept laser source using combined tunable filters working at 1290 nm center wavelength for application in optical coherence tomography. The combined filters consist of a fiber Fabry-Perot tunable filter (FFP-TF) and a polygon mirror with scanning grating based filter. The FFP-TF has the narrow free spectral range (FSR) but ultra-high spectral resolution (narrow instantaneous bandwidth) driven at high frequency far from resonant frequency. The polygon filter in the Littrow configuration is composed of fiber collimator, polygon mirror driven by function generator, and diffractive grating with low groove. Polygon filter coarsely tunes with wide turning range and then FFP-TF finely tunes with narrow band-pass filtering. In contrast to traditional method using single tunable filter, the trade-off between bandwidth and instantaneous line-width is alleviated. The combined filters can realize ultra wide scan range and fairly narrow instantaneous bandwidth simultaneously. Two semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOA) in the parallel manner are used as the gain medium. The wide bandwidth could be obtained by these parallel SOAs to be suitable for sufficient wide range of the polygon filter’s FSR because each SOA generates its own spectrum independently. The proposed swept laser source provides an edge-to-edge scanning range of 180 nm covering 1220 to 1400 nm with instantaneous line-width of about 0.03 nm at sweeping rate of 23.3 kHz. The swept laser source with combined filters offers broadband tunable range with narrow instantaneous line-width, which especially benefits for high resolution and deep imaging depth optical frequency domain imaging.

Citation Download Citation

Minghui Chen, Zhihua Ding, Cheng Wang, Yimei Huang, Rong Chen, and Chengli Song "Combined tunable filters based swept laser source for optical coherence tomography", Proc. SPIE 8571, Optical Coherence Tomography and Coherence Domain Optical Methods in Biomedicine XVII, 85712W (20 March 2013); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2006002

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE

Includes PDF, HTML & Video, when available

Members: $17.00

Non-members: $21.00 ADD TO CART

PROCEEDINGS
7 PAGES

DOWNLOAD PAPER SAVE TO MY LIBRARY

GET CITATION

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

Get copyright permission Get copyright permission on Copyright Marketplace

KEYWORDS

Tunable filters

Optical filters

Laser sources

Mirrors

Optical coherence tomography

Bandpass filters

Linear filtering

Show All Keywords

Keywords/Phrases

Search In:

Publication Years