3D nondestructive testing system with an affordable multiple reference optical-delay-based optical coherence tomography.

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is emerging as a powerful noncontact imaging technique, allowing high-quality cross-sectional imaging of scattering specimens nondestructively. However, the complexity and cost of current embodiments of an OCT system limit its use in various nondestructive testing (NDT) applications at resource-limited settings. In this paper, we demonstrate the feasibility of a novel low-cost OCT system for a range of nondestructive testing (NDT) applications. The proposed imaging system is based on an enhanced time-domain OCT system with a low cost and small form factor reference arm optical delay, called multiple reference OCT (MR-OCT), which uses a miniature voice coil actuator and a partial mirror for extending the axial scan range. The proposed approach is potentially a low-cost, compact, and unique optical imaging modality for a range of NDT applications in a low-resource setting. Using this method, we demonstrated the capability of MR-OCT to perform cross-sectional and volumetric imaging at 1200 A-scans per second.