Abstract

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) enables us to obtain 3-dimensional tomographic information of the measured object [1]. Since OCT provides non-invasive observation capability of water-rich biological specimens with micrometer-order axial resolution, it has been widely used in biology and medicine. However, the lateral resolution in conventional OCT is not sufficient to observe smaller details, such as cellular structures inside a sample. To improve the lateral resolution, optical coherence microscopy (OCM) is proposed, which is a imaging technique that combines conventional confocal microscopy and low-coherence interferometric detection. In OCM, the use of an objective lens with high numerical aperture (NA) and confocal detection provides ~ 1-order higher lateral resolution compared with conventional OCT [2]. In addition, OCM also improves the image contrast because the combination of the confocal detection and low-coherence interferometric detection provides high rejection capability of signals from out-of-focus, which could become background signals in an image.

© 2015 Japan Society of Applied Physics, Optical Society of America