Fiber-Based Polarization Diversity Detection for Polarization-Sensitive Optical Coherence Tomography

Abstract

We present a new fiber-based polarization diversity detection (PDD) scheme for polarization sensitive optical coherence tomography (PSOCT). This implementation uses a new custom miniaturized polarization-maintaining fiber coupler with single mode (SM) fiber inputs and polarization maintaining (PM) fiber outputs. The SM fiber inputs obviate matching the optical lengths of the two orthogonal OCT polarization channels prior to interference while the PM fiber outputs ensure defined orthogonal axes after interference. Advantages of this detection scheme over those with bulk optics PDD include lower cost, easier miniaturization, and more relaxed alignment and handling issues. We incorporate this PDD scheme into a galvanometer-scanned OCT system to demonstrate system calibration and PSOCT imaging of an achromatic quarter-wave plate, fingernail in vivo, and chicken breast, salmon, cow leg, and basa fish muscle samples ex vivo.

Keywords

• Polarization sensitive optical coherence tomography
• imaging systems
• fiber optic components
• medical optics instrumentation