Artifact removal in FD-OCT with a B-M mode scanning technique: condition on the transverse step

One of the main drawbacks of Fourier-domain optical coherence tomography is its inability to differentiate between positive and negative locations relative to the zero-delay position. In the recently proposed B-M mode scanning technique, these artifacts are removed by introducing a transverse modulation between successive Ascans followed by a Fourier filtering in the transverse direction. This paper deals with the relation between the transverse step size and the efficiency of artifact removal. This relation is illustrated with measurements performed on an onion with different transverse step sizes and different focusing optics. These experimental results are used to support a proposed criterion for the transverse step. The criterion aims at insuring efficient artifact removal while limiting the amount of oversampling in the transverse scan.