System based on low coherence interferometry for long distance measurement

In this work, the use of optical tomography technique (OCT) for measuring long distances (larger than 5 cm) is presented. The scheme employs as light source, a tunable fiber laser with emission in the spectral region near 1550 nm and a self-calibration system. Although the advance of OCT technique in its different formats (flight time or time domain, Fourier domain or the latest known as white light) has an intense development, it is more oriented to measurements with high resolution, but where the sample size does not exceed 4 mm. Then, the proposed system extends the range of industrial applications.