High-throughput dark-field full-field optical coherence tomography

Full-field optical coherence tomography (FF-OCT) can rapidly acquire 2D en face OCT images through a scattering medium. However, the standard interferometer configurations waste almost 75% of light. In addition, specular reflections can saturate the detector, limiting FF-OCT performance. Here, we report on a high-throughput dark-field (HTDF) FF-OCT configuration that efficiently uses the available light budget and allows suppressing specular reflections. Specifically, we demonstrate that images acquired with the HTDF FF-OCT system have 3.5 times higher signal-to-noise ratio when compared to our previously developed regular FF-OCT system.