Signal Simulation and Signal Processing for Multiple Reference Optical Coherence Tomography

The generation of a synthetic MR-OCT signal is presented and compared to a real acquired signal. Multiple reference optical coherence tomography (MR-OCT) is a novel time-domain interferometric system. The MR-OCT principle is adding a partial mirror to extend the axial scan range, which effectively extends the scan depth for imaging. The actuation of the scan mirror required for time-domain OCT, was demonstrated to operate with a low cost miniature voice coil, such as a speaker extracted from a smartphone or CD/DVD pick-up system. Building a compact and cost-effective optical imaging system will enable affordable medical diagnosis at low-resource setting applications. The partial mirror recirculates multiple reflections (orders) into the interferometric system and the increase of optical path delay does increase the beat frequency of the interference signal. The synthesis of such an interference signal using a numerical method is described in this manuscript.