Dispersion flattened nonlinear square photonic crystal fiber for dental OCT

The objective of this paper is to generate supercontinuum (SC) spectrums for dental optical coherence tomography (OCT) using proposed highly nonlinear dispersion flattened photonic crystal fiber (HNDF-PCF) as a propagating media of picosecond pulse easily produced by less expensive commercially available laser sources. This proposed HNDF-PCF has a very flat dispersion at 1.31 µm wavelength and by doping germanium (Ge) inside the core, nonlinear coefficient of the proposed HNDF-PCF is increased as large as 58.7 W⁻¹km⁻¹. Simulation results show that the proposed HNDF-PCF offers efficient SC light for dental OCT at 1.31 µm wavelength. Coherent length of the generated SC light is found 9.1 µm and spatial resolutions in the depth direction for dental OCT are found 5.5 µm for enamel and 5.9 µm for dentin.