Optical coherence tomography application by using optical phase shift based on fiber optic sensor

We demonstrate fiber-optic sensor applications to full-range complex optical coherence tomography (OCT). To extend imaging range in OCT, real value or interferogram measured from an interferometer is needed to convert into complex value. For the purpose, various treatments such as mechanical, electro-optical, optical and programming based methods have been exploited in the interferometer. To make complex signal in fiber-optic interferometer, we propose vibrationbased optical phase shifting method. The proposed method utilizes optical fiber sensors that are for the detection of vibration using optical fiber. When coiled fiber was exposed to vibration, interferogram presents fringe shift without periodicity variations, which means that vibration induces phase shift in the interferometer. Therefore, intentionally generated vibration could be applicable to controlling of the optical phase shift and retrieval of the complex signal. As a result, the vibrations applied to coiled fiber were able to remove mirror image in Fourier domain. This result proved the feasibility of the proposed method on the extending of optical imaging range.