Imaging water absorption with spectroscopic optical coherence tomography

Summary form only given. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is an emerging technique for micron-scale cross-sectional imaging of biological tissue. High resolution detection of reflected or backscattering light is performed using low coherence interferometry. High nonlinearity, air-silica microstructure fibers or tapered fibers can generate an extremely broadband continuum using low energy femtosecond pulses. This is achieved by the anomalous dispersion characteristics of the fibers which shift the zero dispersion wavelength to shorter wavelengths and small core diameters which provide a tight mode confinement. We recently demonstrated ultrahigh resolution OCT using an air-silica microstructure fiber as light source in the spectral region between 1.2 /spl mu/m and 1.5 /spl mu/m with an axial resolution of 2.5 /spl mu/m at 1.3 /spl mu/m center wavelength. In this paper we demonstrate an extension of this method to broadband spectroscopically resolved OCT imaging.