Full-field optical coherence tomography with thermal light

A simple optical coherence tomography system has been developed based on a white-light Linnik interferometric microscope with its reference mirror mounted on a piezoelectric translator. The geometrical extension of the optics allows efficient illumination of this device with a low-power (3-W) light bulb, yielding full-field interferometric images at 50 Hz with a fast CCD camera. Owing to the very broad spectral width of the light source and of the camera response, we achieved axial resolutions equal to 1.1 mum in free space and 0.7 mum through a standard microscope cover plate. Tomographic images of an epithelial cell smear and of an hematological sample are shown. (C) 2002 Optical Society of America.