Direct bidirectional angle-insensitive imaging of the flow signal intensity in Doppler optical coherence tomography

We introduce a new method, to our knowledge, for direct detection of flow signal intensity by stationary target rejection. In our system, two delay lines are constructed with identical scanning speed and ranging depth. One delay line is used for depth ranging as well as phase modulation, and the other one acts as a full-range retroreflector (FRRR). The signal from this FRRR carries the overall features of local phase modulation, and it is used as the local oscillator for coherent demodulation. With this setup, stationary targets can be rejected at a 4-kHz high-pass cutoff frequency of the filter that follows the demodulator, compared with 20 kHz for conventional fixed-frequency demodulation. This technique features angle insensitivity and provides flow direction as well by implementing standard in-phase and quadrature detection. Besides the direct directional detection of flow signal intensity, flow speed information can be acquired with postprocessing. (C) 2005 Optical Society of America.