METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR DIFFERENTIAL PHASE OPTICAL COHERENCE TOMOGRAPHY

摘要

One form of the present invention is a dual channel optical reflectometer composed of four separate paths (100, 102, 104 and 106), interconnected through a path coupler (108). The source path (100), optically connected to the path coupler (108), is comprised of a light source (110) that is optically coupled to a birefringent optical fiber (112). A depolarizer (114) is placed in-line in the optical fiber (112) and is of sufficient length (116) to insure complete decorrelation with independent phase components that are separated by virtue of the birefringent nature of the optical fiber (112). The reference path (102) is comprised of another birefringent optical fiber (118) that is optically connected to the path coupler (108) on one end, and has the other end optically aligned with a collimating lens (120) that collimates the light emitted from the second end of optical fiber (118) into a scanning delay line (122).