Passive optical module for polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography systems.

The paper presents a proof-of-concept polarization-sensitive swept source optical coherence tomography (OCT) system that performs measurements of the retardance as well as of the axis orientation of a linear birefringent sample. The system performs single input state polarization-sensitive OCT and employs an optical module based on optically passive elements such as two beam displacers and a Faraday rotator. Our implementation of the PS-OCT system does not need any calibration step to compensate for the polarimetric effect of the fibers, and its operation does not require a balanced polarization-diversity detector. The optical module allows measurement of the two polarization properties of the sample via two measurements which are performed simultaneously.