A large depth range is needed if optical coherence tomography (OCT) is to be used to observe multiple teeth
simultaneously. A discretely swept optical frequency domain imaging system with a 24-mm depth range was made by
using a superstructure-grating distributed Bragg reflector (SSG-DBR) laser as the light source and setting the frequencystep
interval to be 3.13 GHz (λ ≈ 0.026 nm). The swept wavelength range was 40 nm centered at 1580 nm, the resolution
was 29 μm, and the A-scan rate was 1.3 kHz. Application of the OCT system to a dental phantom was demonstrated.
We have been developing a Mach-Zehnder type of optical frequency domain reflectometry optical coherence tomography (OFDR-OCT) that uses discretely swept superstructure-grating distributed Bragg- reflector (SSG-DBR) lasers developed for telecommunication fields and has a 12-mm-depth range. We report images obtained with L-band (1560 to 1600 nm) and C-band (1529 to 1568 nm) SSG-DBR sources at 0.5 µs/step, which is 20 times faster than the scanning speed used to obtain the images we reported previously. Despite the faster scanning, we obtain good OCT images of both hard and soft dental tissues in vitro and in vivo.
We have been developing a unique optical frequency domain reflectometry (OFDR)-OCT based on Mach-Zehnder interferometer using a discretly swept superstructure-grating distributed Bragg- reflector (SSG-DBR) lasers developed for telecommunication field. Our previous measurements at C-band wavelength (1529 to 1568 nm) revealed good quality of data. In this work, we extend measurements with a L-band (1560 to 1600 nm) SSG-DBR source at faster scanning speed of 0.5 &mgr;s/step compared with former 10 &mgr;s/step. In spite of the faster scanning, we can observe better quality of OCT images of hard and soft dental tissues in-vitro and in-vivo measurements.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.