Suppression of saturation artifacts in swept source optical coherence tomography using dual channel detection

A technique to suppress saturation artifacts in swept source optical coherence tomography (SSOCT) system was presented. The detected signal was split into two channels of a high speed data acquisition card with two levels by a power divider. The signal in one channel with higher level was used to reconstruct OCT images and the signal in the other channel with lower level was used to compensate the saturated signal in the first channel by calibrating the splitting ratio between the two channels. Based on dual channel detection, this technique can enhance the dynamic range of SSOCT system and remove saturation artifacts in OCT imaging with simple and cost effective design. Imaging of human finger with the system demonstrated that this method can achieve high dynamic range without saturation artifacts in SSOCT.