Summary: The review provides a concise explanation of principles of operation of different optical coherence tomography methods. A comparative analysis of their advantages and disadvantages is presented in relation to specific applications. The review will assist the reader in making an educated choice on the most suitable optical coherence tomography method to be used in a particular application.

We demonstrate the functionality of an en-face optical coherence tomography (OCT) system with images from the retina and skin. En-face images collected at different depths are subsequently used to reconstruct a 3D volume of the tissue. The reconstruction allows software inferred OCT longitudinal images at any transversal position in the stack. The position in depth in the stack before creating longitudinal OCT images is also adjustable, offering a valuable guidance tool for exploring the 3D volume of the tissue. This is illustrated by Quick time movies showing either depth or lateral exploration along one of two possible different directions in the stack of transversal OCT images. Sufficient accuracy of the volume rendered is obtained in 20 seconds when the system operates at 2 frames a second. The system, equipped with the 3D rendering feature acts as a valuable diagnostic tool allowing “peeling off” of transversal and longitudinal biologic material to investigate different internal features.

Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is an optical interferometric technique developed mainly for in vivo imaging of the eye and biological tissues. In this paper, we demonstrate the potential of OCT for non-invasive examination of museum paintings. Two en-face scanning OCT systems operating at 850 nm and 1300 nm were used to produce B-scan and C-scan images at typical working distances of 2 cm. The 3D images produced by the OCT systems show not only the structure of the varnish layer but also the paint layers and underdrawings (preparatory drawings under the paint layers). The highest ever resolution and dynamic range images of underdrawings are presented and for the first time it is possible to find out non-invasively on which layer the underdrawings were drawn.

A review is presented of different scanning, acquisition and processing techniques used to obtain depth-resolved information in optical-coherence tomography (OCT). The principles and performances o...

We introduce a novel optical path-modulation technique for a low-coherence interferometric imaging system based on transverse scanning of the target with a galvanometric scanning-mirror pair. The path modulation arises when the beam that is incident upon one of the scanning mirrors does not fall on its axis of rotation. The method is demonstrated by the production of en-face low-coherence images of different objects such as a fiber-optic tip and a human retina in vivo.