Meter-range volumetric imaging with 15µm resolution
Dr. Zhao Wang and the group of James G. Fujimoto at MIT recently published a groundbreaking Optica paper in which 3D tomographic volumetric imaging (OCT imaging) was performed over a full one-meter-cubed volume, with 15 micron axial resolution.
The results were also presented at SPIE Photonics West 2016 BIOS - view his entire presentation with your conference login:
Miniaturized silicon photonic integrated swept source OCT receiver with dual polarization, dual balanced, in-phase and quadrature detection (Conference Presentation), Proc. SPIE 9697
The astonishing result was enabled by a Praevium 1310nm MEMS-VCSEL laser light source, which has been shown to have an optical coherence length of hundreds of meters [JLT 2015]. Typical OCT light sources have coherence lengths in the millimeter range, rendering such long-range imaging unfeasible. In addition, the extremely high-speed detection required for acquiring the long-range interferogram was enabled by an Acacia Networks silicon-photonics dual-quadrature receiver chip.
Tomographic imaging captures high-resolution details within and through the objects, not just surface topology. These bottles are situated in front of a metal plate; color-coding indicates depth of the detected surface.
Animated cross-sectioning of a skull, illustrating the post-processing analysis that can be performed on the volumetric data.
Summaries of the result and it's impact on industrial imaging have been printed in numerous publications:
BioOptics World: Optical Coherence Tomography: Bio and beyond – OCT advance breaks barriers in imaging scale, cost
PhysOrg: Researchers achieve meter-scale optical coherence tomography for first time
Other syndications: BusinessWire, Digital Journal, Yahoo! India, BioSpace, MarketWatch, EyeWire Today
