Advances in low coherence interferometry for tissue imaging

We present fiberised OCT systems developed to image biological tissue with high depth resolution, The systems can deliver transversal as well as longitudinal OCT images. When in the transversal mode, the systems provide a confocal image simultaneously with the OCT image. Design particularities in adopting the system for imaging either the skin or the retina in vivo are presented. They refer to the interface optics, power to the tissue and imaging speed. Images from retina and skin in vitro and in vivo are shown. When applied to the eye, line rates up to 1 kHz and frame rates up to 5 Hz can be used. In order to improve the penetration depth in skin, lower scanning rates are used. Also, flow of milk into a vessel simulator is investigated using Doppler OCT. In this case, no transversal scanning is applied. The laminar profile of the velocity inside the vessel is determined with the depth accuracy of the OCT.