A high-efficiency lensless all-fiber probe for optical coherence tomography (OCT) is presented. The probe is composed of a segment of large-core multimode fiber (MMF), a segment of tapered MMF, and a length of single-mode fiber (SMF). A controllable output beam can be designed by a simple adjustment of its probe structure parameters (PSPs), instead of the selection of fibers with different optical parameters. A side-view probe with a diameter of 340 μm and a rigid length of 6.37 mm was fabricated, which provides an effective imaging range of ∼0.6  mm with a full width at half-maximum beam diameter of less than 30 μm. The insertion loss of the probe was measured to be 0.81 dB, ensuring a high sensitivity of 102.25 dB. Satisfactory images were obtained by the probe-based OCT system, demonstrating the feasibility of the probe for endoscopic OCT applications.

Spectral domain phase microscopy for high-sensitive and broad-dynamic-range quantitative phase imaging is presented. The phase retrieval is realized in the depth domain to maintain a high sensitivity, while the phase information obtained in the spectral domain is exploited to extend the dynamic range of optical path difference. Sensitivity advantage of phase retrieved in the depth domain over that in the spectral domain is thoroughly investigated. The performance of the proposed depth domain phase based approach is illustrated by phase imaging of a resolution target and an onion skin.

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For the needs of online nondestructive testing method in glass industry, we have presented a large-range line-field parallel spectral domain optical coherence tomography system. Based on fast area scan CMOS camera, the whole cross-sectional image can be acquired by a single shot. Depth-resolved image at different lateral positions can be acquired simultaneously, without the lateral scanning mechanism. The axial resolution is 17.9 μm, the lateral resolutions in parallel direction and scanning direction are 55.7 μm and 24.8 μm, respectively. The system measurement range is 32 mm in lateral direction and 6 mm in axial direction. At 1 mm axial position, the system sensitivity can reach 62 dB at a rate of 128 000 A-scan/s. By using the present system, application in glass defect inspection has been investigated.

Since many industrial materials have micro or submicro structures on the surface or subsurface, utrahigh-resolution is required in the inspection of these materials. Ultrahigh-resolution optical coherence tomography uses broadband light sources to achieve axial image resolutions on the scale of a few microns. We have been investigating an ultrahigh-resolution spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) system using supercontinuum sources (SC) in free space. The effective SC spectrum has a full width at half maximum of 230 nm centered around 665 nm, and the imaging setup has an ultrahigh axial resolution of 0.9 μm in air, and a lateral resolution of 3.9 μm, with the system measurement range being 0.6 mm in axial direction. At a 50 μm axial position, the sensitivity can be 63 dB with 28600 axial scans per second at 2048 pixels per axial scan. Images of polystyrene microspheres solution with an average diameter of 5 μm and different sizes of industrial abrasive papers are presented to illustrate the performance of the system.