Resolution improvement of optical coherence tomography with software spectral shaping

Abstract

We demonstrate dynamic spectral shaping in an optical coherence tomography (OCT) system with multiple scans of segmented spectral bands and software signal processing. With an effective spectral full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) of 45 nm, centered at 950 nm, we compress the interference fringe FWHM from 31 microns down to 7 microns, which is smaller than the theoretical limit of 8.9 microns if a Gaussian spectral shape is assumed, through the combined effect of dispersion compensation and spectral shaping.