Development of fibre optic broadband sources at 1 μm region for optical coherence tomography

Recent developments on broadband optical sources emitting at 1050 nm wavelength for medical applications, in particular optical coherence tomography (OCT), have revealed enhanced depth penetration into the choroid, reduced scattering losses and improved image performances in eyes with turbid media, when compared to the most commercial used semiconductor optical source technology at 820 nm. In this paper, we present our study of fibre optic broadband sources (BBS) at 1 micron region, based on the amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) from rare-earth doped silica fibres for the integration into OCT systems. The target specifications for this type of sources are: 1050 nm central emission wavelength, with spectral width of ~70 nm, tens of miliwatts of output power and smoothly shaped output spectra. Several combinations of rare-earth doped optical fibres integrated into different fibre optic configurations have been tested. Optical bandwidth optimization and spectral shaping using different fibre optic techniques are presented and their autocorrelation function compared.