Multiple reference lights low coherence interferometer

摘要

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a powerful technique for imaging the random scattering medium. Resolution improvement is an important task in the OCT. A novel low coherence interferometer (LCI) in which three reference mirrors are used to generate reference lights is proposed for obtaining higher resolution. The output signal of this LCI is a superposition of interference of signal light with three reference lights. Through adjusting the relative intensities of reference lights, the width of the axial point spread function for the LCI can be reduced, then the resolution of the LCI will be improved. The influence of fluctuations of wavelength and mirror separation on the resolution improvement are investigated. It is expected that this new approach may provide an effective and useful technique for optical measurement.