Optical coherence tomography based on optical frequency comb generator with single-sideband modulator

A novel optical coherence tomography (OCT) scheme is proposed based on an optical frequency comb (OFC) generator with single-sideband modulator. The OFC generator has a flat spectrum of 7.46-nm full width at half magnitude at 1550-nm band. By changing the comb interval around 10 GHz slightly, the detection depth is scanned through the imaging sample at high speed. Elimination of the coherence side-lobes of the generated optical comb is also studied by setting the OFC´s seed laser at optimized wavelength. Tomography images of a glass cell with air or milk filled are successfully achieved with a spatial resolution of ~90 um, which can be further improved by using a gain-flattening filter in the OFC generator.