Headline Headline 1. Introduction Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is proven to be a non- invasive, high resolution (μm), medical optical imaging capable of providing cross-sectional and 3D images to visualize the structure of biological samples and internal organs. 2. Methods A telecoms laser, with a wavelength coverage of ≈ 60 nm centered at 1540 nm, was optical characterized (lasing wavelength/SMSR) power using the setup shown in Fig. 3. 3. Results 9 Authors Affiliations References 1. J. Fujimoto and W. Drexler, Introduction to Optical Coherence Tomography in Optical Coherence Tomography and Applications. Springer, vol. 1 2. M. Bonesi, R.A. Leitgeb, W. Drexler, “Akinetic all-semiconductor programmable swept source at 1550 nm and 1310 nm with centimeters coherence length”, Opt. Express (2014) 3. J. Engelstaedter, B. Roycroft, F. Peters, B. Corbert, “Dynamic SMSR measurement of fast SG-DBR laser wavelength switching” IEEE Lasers and Electro-Optics, (2009) Linear sweep of telecoms lasers for OCT applications Carlos Reyes, Tomasz Piwonski, Stephen Hegarty, Brian Corbett, Brendan Roycroft 1 Tyndall National Institute, University College Cork, Lee Maltings, Cork, Ireland 2 CAPPA – Centre for Advanced Photonics & Process Analysis, Cork Institute of Technology, Bishoptowns, Cork, Ireland 1 1,2 1,2 1 1 Objective To develop a tunable swept laser using telecoms laser technology that is able to create a linearly increasing sweep as a function of time, suitable for OCT. Swept-source OCT (SS-OCT) requires a laser that is able to sweep over a wide wavelength range as a linear function of time. The axial resolution is defined by wavelength coverage. • 5 section tunable laser allows ‘akinetic’ tunable mechanism • All-electronically tunable laser without mechanical parts (Vernier tuning) • Good wavelength coverage • Tuning paths clearly identified • Mode hopes in the borders • Wavelength linearly increases 4. Conclusion 1 Figure 1. Basic structure of a SS-OCT system. DAQ : Data Acquisition Figure 2. Swept laser performance 2 Figure 3. Experimental setup to characterize the optical performance of a tunable laser in terms of its lasing wavelength and SMSR. DAQ : Data Acquisition; V/I – Voltage to Current converter; PD: Photodiode TLS: Tunable Laser Source; TEC: Thermoelectric Controller; OSA: Optical Spectrum Analyzer Figure 4. Multi-section laser composed of five sections: 2 mirrors, phase, gain and semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) Wavelength (nm) Figure 6. Surface Plot of the Tuning Map 2 0 20 40 60 0 10 20 30 40 50 1580 1560 1540 1520 1500 Mirror 2 (mA) Mirror 1 (mA) Wavelength (nm) 1510 1520 1530 1540 1550 1560 1570 3D Surface Plot • Wavelength levels are clear • There are three main regions • Perform tuning in Region 2 • Outstanding single mode operation • Useful to increase OCT image quality (4) 3000 points are found (5) 300 points are selected to build a linear sweep (6) Automated algorithm to perform a linear sweep (7) 3 KHz sweep measurement Funding was from the EU H2020 project PICCOLO, grant agreement 732111: ‘Multimodal highly-sensitive PhotonICs endoscope for improved in-vivo COLOn Cancer diagnosis and clinical decision support’. 3 ∆ = 22 2 ∆ Axial Resolution: 5 No wavelength duplicates AC-RMS 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 100 50 0 Figure 9. No wavelength duplicates 6 Automated point finder algorithm Figure 10. Automated Algorithm Amplitude Sample # -1.8 -1.6 -1.4 -1.2 -1 -0.8 -0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0 0.2 0 5000 10000 15000 20000 25000 30000 35000 40000 Linear Filter Output 7 Figure 11. Linear Sweep Figure 7. SMSR Map SMSR Map 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 48.00 42.03 36.06 30.08 24.10 18.13 12.15 6.175 0.2 dB Mirror 1 (mA) Mirror 2 (mA) 3 Mirror 1 Phase Gain Mirror 2 SOA Figure 5. Wavelength Tuning Map 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 1573 1565 1557 1549 1541 1533 1525 1517 1509 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 Mirror 2 (mA) Mirror 1 (mA) Laser’s Wavelength Tuning Map 1 A linear wavelength sweep can be obtained using a telecoms laser but its performance can be further improved by reducing the noise of the driver electronics and avoiding high noise transitions. OCT 1560 1540 1520 60 40 20 0 20 40 60 Full 4D Scatter Plot AC-RMS Figure 8. 4D Scatter Plot Wavelength (nm) 4