Pulsed-source and swept-source spectral-domain optical coherence tomography with reduced motion artifacts.

Significant motion artifacts may arise in conventional spectral-domain optical coherence tomography due to sample or probe motion during the exposure time of a CCD array. We show, for the first time to our knowledge, that the motion artifacts can be greatly reduced by short illumination of individual CCD pixels and that this can be accomplished by use of two distinct classes of light sources: broadband pulsed sources and cw wavelength-swept sources. We experimentally demonstrate the benefit of these techniques in terms of the reduction of signal fading due to an axially moving sample and fiber-optic catheter at a high rotational speed.