Pascale Parrein | PubMed Health

PubMed2004

Phase noise and phase modulation in optical coherence tomography.

The signal in optical coherence tomography is often modulated either in phase or by use of the Doppler modulation generated by a depth-scanning mechanism. The effect of each type of modulation on the signal's amplitude is evaluated. The advantages of each type of modulation in terms of immunity to phase noise and penetration depth are discussed in relation to two envelope detection schemes, i.e., lock-in detection and rms-to-dc conversion. Phase noise due to drifts and demodulation instabilities causes distortion of the signal envelope and can be responsible in part for the speckle appearance of the image.

Animals↗

PubMed2002

Estimation of longitudinal resolution in optical coherence imaging.

The spectral shape of a source is of prime importance in optical coherence imaging because it determines several aspects of image quality, especially longitudinal resolution. Wide spectral bandwidth, which provides short coherence length, is sought to obtain high-resolution imaging. To estimate longitudinal resolution, the spectral shape of a source is usually assumed to be Gaussian, although the spectra of real sources are typically non-Gaussian. We discuss the limit of this assumption regarding the estimation of longitudinal resolution. To this end, we also investigate how coherence length is related to longitudinal resolution through the evaluation of different definitions of the coherence length. To demonstrate our purpose, the coherence length for several theoretical and real spectral shapes of sources having the same spectral bandwidth and central wavelength is computed. The reliability of coherence length computations toward the estimation of longitudinal resolution is discussed.

Journal Article↗