Chip-based frequency comb sources for optical coherence tomography

• Published in: Optics express 2019-07, Vol.27 (14), p.19896-19905
• Main Authors: Ji, Xingchen, Yao, Xinwen, Klenner, Alexander, Gan, Yu, Gaeta, Alexander L, Hendon, Christine P, Lipson, Michal
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1094-4087; 1094-4087
• DOI: 10.1364/OE.27.019896

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a powerful interferometric imaging technique widely used in medical fields such as ophthalmology, cardiology and dermatology. Superluminescent diodes (SLDs) are widely used as light sources in OCT. Recently integrated chip-based frequency combs have been demonstrated in numerous platforms and the possibility of using these broadband chip-scale combs for OCT has been raised extensively over the past few years. However, the use of these chip-based frequency combs as light sources for OCT requires bandwidth and power compatibility with current OCT systems and have not been shown to date. Here we generate frequency combs based on chip-scale lithographically-defined microresonators and demonstrate its capability as a novel light source for OCT. The combs are designed with a small spectral line spacing of 0.21 nm which ensure imaging range comparable to commercial system and operated at non-phase locked regime which provide conversion efficiency of 30%. The comb source is shown to be compatible with a standard commercial spectral domain (SD) OCT system and enables imaging of human tissue with image quality comparable to the one achieved with tabletop commercial sources. The comb source also provides a path towards fully integrated OCT systems.