Stroboscopic ultrahigh-resolution full-field optical coherence tomography

We present a new technique that produces en face tomographic images with a 10-mu s acquisition time per image. The setup consists of an interference microscope with stroboscopic illumination provided by a xenon arc flash lamp (10-mu s flashes at 15 Hz). The tomographic images are obtained from two phase-opposed interferometric images recorded simultaneously by two synchronized CCD cameras. Transverse resolution better than 1.0 mu m is achieved by use of high-numerical-aperture microscope objectives. The short coherence length of the source yields an axial resolution of 0.9 mu m. 3 x 3 pixel binning leads to a detection sensitivity of 71 dB. Our system is suitable for various applications, particularly in biology for in vivo cellular-level imaging. (c) 2005 Optical Society of America.