Adler Desmond C, Wieser Wolfgang, Trepanier Francois, Schmitt Joseph M, Huber Robert A
LightLab Imaging Inc., a St. Jude Medical subsidiary, 1 Technology Park Drive, Westford, MA 01886, USA.
Opt Express. 2011 Oct 10;19(21):20930-9. doi: 10.1364/OE.19.020930.
Fourier domain mode locked (FDML) lasers are excellent tunable laser sources for frequency domain optical coherence tomography (FD-OCT) systems due to their combination of high sweep rates, large tuning ranges, and high output powers. However, conventional FDML lasers provide coherence lengths of only 4-10 mm, limiting their use in demanding applications such as intravascular OCT where coherence lengths of >20 mm are required for optimal imaging of large blood vessels. Furthermore, like most swept lasers, conventional FDML lasers produce only one useable sweep direction per tunable filter drive cycle, halving the effective sweep rate of the laser compared to the filter drive frequency. Here, we demonstrate a new class of FDML laser incorporating broadband dispersion compensation near 1310 nm. Elimination of chromatic dispersion in the FDML cavity results in the generation of forward (short to long wavelength) and backward (long to short wavelength) sweeps with substantially identical properties and coherence lengths of >21 mm. This advance enables long-range, high-speed FD-OCT imaging without the need for optical buffering stages, significantly reducing laser cost and complexity.
傅里叶域锁模(FDML)激光器是频域光学相干断层扫描(FD - OCT)系统中出色的可调谐激光源,这得益于其高扫描速率、大调谐范围和高输出功率的组合。然而,传统的FDML激光器提供的相干长度仅为4 - 10毫米,限制了它们在诸如血管内OCT等要求苛刻的应用中的使用,在血管内OCT中,为了对大血管进行最佳成像,需要大于20毫米的相干长度。此外,与大多数扫频激光器一样,传统的FDML激光器在每个可调谐滤波器驱动周期仅产生一个可用的扫描方向,与滤波器驱动频率相比,激光器的有效扫描速率减半。在此,我们展示了一种新型的FDML激光器,它在1310纳米附近集成了宽带色散补偿。消除FDML腔内的色散会产生具有基本相同特性且相干长度大于21毫米的正向(短波长到长波长)和反向(长波长到短波长)扫描。这一进展使得无需光学缓冲阶段就能进行远程、高速的FD - OCT成像,显著降低了激光器的成本和复杂性。