Working Principle of Optical Coherence Tomography

Scanning interferometry is a technique surface height measurement. By exploiting the low coherence of a white light source, an interference pattern appears only when the path length difference falls within the coherence length. Therefore, it enables very precise measurements, a property that is taken advantage of in medical imaging with optical coherence tomography (OCT), which employs precisely this physical principle. VirtualLab Fusion’s various interoperable modeling techniques on a single platform facilitate an efficient modeling of coherence effects. In this example a Michelson interferometer with a Xenon lamp is constructed and used to measure a specimen with a smoothly modulated surface.