Motion artifact suppression in full-field optical coherence tomography

Significant motion artifacts limit the performance of conventional full-field optical coherence tomography (FF-OCT) for in vivo imaging. We present a theoretical and experimental study of those limitations. A new FF-OCT system suppressing most of artifacts due to sample motions is demonstrated using instantaneous phase shifting with nonpolarizing optics and pulsed illumination. The experimental setup is based on a Linnik-type interferometer illuminated by the superluminescence emission from a Ti:Al2O3 waveguide crystal. En face tomographic images are calculated as a combination of two phase-opposed interferometric images acquired simultaneously by two CCD cameras placed at both outputs of the interferometer, with a spatial resolution of 0.8 mu m x 1.6 mu m (axial x transverse) and a detection sensitivity of similar to 60 dB. (C) 2010 Optical Society of America