Investigation of Coherent Amplification with a Semiconductor Optical Amplifier employed in a swept source OCT system

摘要

Optical coherence tomography relies on the coherent gating and coherent amplification from its reference light to produce high axial resolution, high sensitivity image. The signal to noise ratio of the optical coherence tomography image is proportional to the detected back-scattering photon numbers from sample beam. Thus, the gain of an optical amplifier device can be added to the weak sample beam reflected signal while preserving its coherence by the coherent amplification process when the weak back reflected signal is amplified by the optical amplifier device. However, the optical amplifier device will emit spontaneous emission in its coherent amplification process. In this study, we report some preliminary results on the investigation of the coherent amplification and the side effects caused by the spontaneous emission in a swept source OCT system.