Dispersion matching of sample and reference arms in optical frequency domain reflectometry-optical coherence tomography using a dispersion-shifted fiber.

We demonstrate dispersion matching of sample and reference arms in an optical frequency domain reflectometry-optical coherence tomography (OFDR-OCT) system with a discretely swept light source centered at 1550 nm, using a dispersion-shifted fiber (DSF) in the reference arm. By adjusting the optical length of the DSF so that it is equal to that of the free space in the sample arm, we achieve a high resolution of 27.2 microm (in air), which is very close to the theoretically expected value of 26.8 microm when we measure the reflective mirror. This improves the degraded resolution (36.1 microm ) in a system using a conventional single-mode fiber when the free-space length in the sample arm was 909 mm. We also demonstrate a clear interface between air and the enamel layer of an extracted human tooth with the discretely swept (DS) OFDR-OCT imaging due to the improved resolution provided by this technique. These results show the potential of our DS-OFDR-OCT system for a compact low-cost apparatus with a high axial resolution.