Advantage of low NEP balanced receivers in swept source OCT

Bart Johnson; Tim Ford; Seungbum Woo; Ed Mallon; Mike Crawford; Jason Ensher; Ioan Bucsa; Peter Whitney

doi:10.1117/12.2577854

5 March 2021 Advantage of low NEP balanced receivers in swept source OCT

Bart Johnson, Tim Ford, Seungbum Woo, Ed Mallon, Mike Crawford, Jason Ensher, Ioan Bucsa, Peter Whitney

Proceedings Volume 11630, Optical Coherence Tomography and Coherence Domain Optical Methods in Biomedicine XXV; 116301M (2021) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2577854
Event: SPIE BiOS, 2021, Online Only

Abstract

Low NEP balanced receivers generally do not result in better sensitivity in a shot-noise-limited swept source OCT system. However, there is an advantage if RIN is significant. A lower NEP, even in the shot-noise-limited case, does allow for lower reference arm powers. This, in turn, reduces fixed pattern artifact signals caused by stray optical component reflections inside a swept source laser cavity. An NEP reduction of √10 allows the reference power to be reduced 10 dB while maintaining SNR. This reduces the pattern to noise ratio by 10 dB because pattern noise is directly detected (20 dB scaling per decade reference power), whereas the image signal is heterodyne detected (10 dB scaling per decade of reference power). We present sensitivity and fixed pattern measurements taken with six commercial balanced receivers, including an APD receiver. We also present an NEP survey of 23 commercial receivers over a wide range of bandwidths and transimpedances.

Conference Presentation

Citation Download Citation

Bart Johnson, Tim Ford, Seungbum Woo, Ed Mallon, Mike Crawford, Jason Ensher, Ioan Bucsa, and Peter Whitney "Advantage of low NEP balanced receivers in swept source OCT", Proc. SPIE 11630, Optical Coherence Tomography and Coherence Domain Optical Methods in Biomedicine XXV, 116301M (5 March 2021); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2577854

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE

Includes PDF, HTML & Video, when available