Low sidelobe limited diffraction optical coherence tomography

Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is a relatively new type of imaging system for medical diagnosis. Because most current OCT systems use a sharply focused beam in tissues, they have a short depth of field (high image resolution is near the focus only). In this paper, limited diffraction beams of different orders are used to increase depth of field and to reduce sidelobes in OCT. Results show that the proposed OCT system has a lateral resolution of about 4.4 wavelengths (the central wavelength of the source is about 940 nm with a bandwidth of about 70 nm) and lower than -60 dB sidelobes over an entire depth of field of 4.5 mm with the diameter of the objective lens of 1 mm.