Endoscopic optical coherence tomography

We present advances in OCT technology that will enable in vivo OCT imaging of internal organ systems such as the cardiovascular system, the urinary tract, and the gastrointestinal tract. These advances include improvements in image acquisition speed to avoid motion artifacts, and the development of an OCT compatible catheter-endoscope for access to internal organ systems. A fast scanning OCT system has recently been constructed. This system employs a high power (200 mW) chromium doped forsterite laser as the low coherence source and a piezoelectric fiber stretcher to induce reference arm optical path length delay. The fast scanning system acquires OCT images with an acquisition rate of four images per second, an axial resolution of 15 /spl mu/m, and a signal to noise ratio of 112 dB.