Yuping CHEN^*, Hong ZHAO, and Zhao WANG

State Key Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, China

(Received August 11, 2008; Accepted December 8, 2008)

The objective of this research was to investigate a new detection method using a thermal light source in a spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SDOCT) operation to improve both image acquisition rate and axial resolution economically. A tungsten halogen lamp was chosen as the illumination source and a Michelson fiber interferometer was employed to generate the interference pattern of an object collected by a spectrometer; the inner structure of the object was obtained from the interference pattern by a Fourier transform. An experiment was performed by measuring a thin film coated on a glass base with the system, and the experimental results indicated that the structure of the thin film could be clearly observed as expected. It was theoretically stated and experimentally verified that the technique was feasible and enables imaging to realize the reconstructions of internal structure of engineering and biological object.

Key words: optical coherence tomography, spectral interferometry, thermal light source, tungsten halogen lamp, fiber optic Michelson interferometer

^*E-mail address: ypc0828@gmail.com