Imaging speed of OCT is a crucial factor for various applications. In swept source OCT, the imaging speed is directly determined by the sweep repetition speed of the wavelength-swept laser. Recently, a stretched-pulse mode-locked (SPML) wavelength-swept laser has been developed, utilizing chromatic dispersion to generate the wavelength-swept output with repetition rates from a few MHz to over 10 MHz without using any mechanical filter. In this work, we investigated SPML lasers with various repetition rates of 10 MHz, 20 MHz, and 80 MHz utilizing 10 m (930 ps/nm), 5 m (465 ps/nm), and 1 m (93 ps/nm) long CFBGs, respectively. We present coherence length and relative intensity noise (RIN) performances of the SPML lasers with various speeds and show the comparison of images acquired using the SPML lasers of 10 MHz and 80 MHz repetition rates.
Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a high-resolution imaging technique that provides wide field and high-speed imaging of three-dimensional volume. Stretched-pulse mode-locked (SPML) wavelength-swept laser has recently emerged as a promising ultrahigh-speed wavelength-swept laser that provides an A-line rate up to tens of MHz. The SPML laser utilizes chromatic dispersion to generate the wavelength-swept output with repetition rates from a few megahertz to over 10 MHz without using any mechanical wavelength scanning filter. For a simple and compact SPML laser design, utilization of a few meter-long chirped fiber Bragg grating (CFBG) as the intra-cavity dispersion element is recently demonstrated. In this work, we present SPML wavelength-swept laser using intra- and extra-cavity CFBG for the ultrahigh-speed OCT. We investigated the performance of the SPML laser as a light source for the ultrahigh-speed OCT by utilizing a combination of intra and extra-cavity stretching. We present that the noise performance and the coherence length performance of the laser can be adjusted and optimized through a proper combination of the intra and the extra cavity stretching in the SPML laser.
We demonstrate an all PMF-based CFBG-SPML laser at 1300 nm and OCT imaging using it. The laser performance of the PMF-based CFBG-SPML laser was as good as the SMF-based CFBG-SPML laser, while providing excellent stability, robustness, and ease of operation.
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