Advanced Optical Coherence Tomography techniques: novel and fast imaging tools for NDT

We demonstrate that Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT), a method which was originally developed for depth-resolved imaging of biological tissue, is suited to adequately respond to different problems posed in the field of contactless material characterisation and non-destructive testing and evaluation. In detail, the potential of advanced OCT techniques like ultrahigh-resolution OCT, polarisation-sensitive OCT or spectral-domain OCT is evaluated and exemplified for the imaging and characterisation of different polymer and ceramic materials, as well as of whole components, like polymer coated medical metal stents.