Theory of optical coherence tomography
Several previous publications have addressed the theory of optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging. These have included original articles, reviews, and books/book chapters. Many of these publications were authored before the major revolution that Fourier-domain techniques (here termed FDOCT) brought to OCT since their sensitivity advantage was confirmed in 2003. Thus, many of these prior works were written primarily from the perspective of time–domain OCT (TDOCT). Also, relatively few prior publications have addressed lateral resolution in OCT systems, which, from an end user perspective, is of equal importance to the axial resolving power derived from low–coherence interferometry. The goal of this chapter is to present a unified theory of OCT, which includes a discussion of imaging performance in all three dimensions and which treats both Fourier– and time–domain OCT on equal footing as specializations of the same underlying principles.
