Correction of saturation effects in endoscopic swept-source optical coherence tomography based on dual-channel detection.

Saturation artifacts that are commonly observed in endoscopic swept-source optical coherence tomography (SSOCT) images cause image degradation and loss of image information. We present work on the correction of saturation effects in endoscopic SSOCT imaging. This method utilizes a broadband power divider with excellent pick-off flatness to divide the detected interference signal into the two channels of an analog-to-digital converter. Based on the precise calibration of the splitting ratio between the two channels, the maximum measurable signal power of the system was drastically increased by using the low level signal in one channel to correct the saturated signal in the other channel. The experimental results demonstrated that this technique can efficiently correct the saturation artifacts in endoscopic two- and three-dimensional SSOCT images in an accurate and cost-effective manner.