Compromising the inherent trade-off between transverse resolution and depth of focus (DOF) remains a long-standing issue in optical coherence tomography (OCT). In this work, we report a novel technique-parallel multiple… Click to show full abstract
Compromising the inherent trade-off between transverse resolution and depth of focus (DOF) remains a long-standing issue in optical coherence tomography (OCT). In this work, we report a novel technique-parallel multiple aperture synthesis (pMAS) to simultaneously generate multiple optical apertures in an OCT sample arm by employing a two-surface coated mirror. In the proposed pMAS, the DOF is extended by a factor of 16.49 without sacrificing the transverse resolution for proof-of-concept experiments when multiple distinctive apertures are digitally synthesized. The microparticles and tissue experiments demonstrate the feasibility of pMAS to address the fundamental problem of limited DOF in high-resolution OCT.
               
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