Daniel Max Staloff

Optical coherence tomography probe design for reduced artifact generation and manufacturability

Many fiber based probes used in Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) are comprised of a spacer, GRIN lens, fiber, and a microprism. This design form suffers from many material interfaces, which induce back reflections into the sample arm of the interferometer. With so many interfaces, these probes can produce artifacts in the system’s imaging window. We present a design which has just two interfaces to minimize image artifacts. The two components of this design are the fiber endface and a reflective optic. With optimization, these two components can produce back reflections below -90dB which will minimize image artifacts. This will results in high fidelity imaging for medical diagnostics.

Alternative optical design for optical coherence tomography probes

Many fiber based probes used in Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) are comprised of a spacer, GRadient INdex (GRIN) lens, and a microprism. This design has the benefit of being relatively simple given the need for only three optical components. However, because of constraints to optical performance specifications, such as the probe working distance and spot size, the spacer and GRIN lens will have demanding and difficult tolerances for component length. These tolerances are a detriment to high volume manufacturing. In this paper we present an alternative monolithic, single component design form which is more robust and eliminates the manufacturing constraints of the present design form, thereby making it ideally suited for high volume manufacturing.