Classical realization of dispersion-canceled, artifact-free, and background-free optical coherence tomography.

Quantum-optical coherence tomography (Q-OCT) provides a dispersion-canceled axial-imaging method, but its practical use is limited by the weakness of the light source and by artifacts in the images. A recent study using chirped-pulse interferometry (CPI) has demonstrated dispersion-canceled and artifact-free OCT with a classical system; however, unwanted background signals still remain after removing the artifacts. Here, we propose a classical optical method that realizes dispersion-canceled, artifact-free, and background-free OCT. We employ a time-reversed system for Q-OCT with transform-limited input laser pulses to achieve dispersion-canceled OCT with a classical system. We have also introduced a subtraction method to remove artifacts and background signals. With these methods, we experimentally demonstrated dispersion-canceled, artifact-free, and background-free axial imaging of a coverglass and cross-sectional imaging of the surface of a coin.