Full-Field Birefringence Imaging by Thermal-Light Polarization-Sensitive Optical Coherence Tomography. II. Instrument and Results

We describe an instrument for measuring the magnitude of birefringence of tomographic images and the principal directions of axes that uses thermal-light polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography. The instrument permits full-field measurements with an axial resolution of 1.5 (mu)m and a transverse resolution limited by diffraction. We obtained a sensitivity of 84 dB, limited by shot noise, when we integrated the signal for 1 s. We verified the validity of the measurement by measuring the birefringence of a variable phase shifter. We present typical results obtained with optical samples.