Chip-based frequency combs sources for optical coherence tomography

TL;DR

This paper introduces chip-scale microresonator sources compatible with standard OCT systems, enabling miniaturized, cost-effective, and high-quality imaging for medical applications.

Contribution

The work demonstrates a miniaturized, chip-based frequency comb source compatible with commercial OCT systems, advancing towards fully integrated OCT devices.

Findings

Achieved OCT imaging quality comparable to commercial tabletop sources.

Demonstrated compatibility of chip-based sources with spectral domain OCT.

Enabled miniaturization of OCT systems for medical imaging.

Abstract

The Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a powerful interferometric imaging technique widely used in medical fields such as ophthalmology, cardiology and dermatology, for which footprint and cost are becoming increasingly important. Here we present a platform for miniaturized sources for OCT based on chip-scale lithographically-defined microresonators. We show that the proposed platform is compatible with standard commercial spectral domain (SD) OCT systems and enable imaging of human tissue with an image quality comparable to the one achieved with tabletop commercial sources. This platform provides a path towards fully integrated OCT systems.