Multi-channel spectral-domain optical coherence tomography using single spectrometer

Multi-channel detection is an effective way to improve data throughput of spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SDOCT). However, current multi-channel OCT requires multiple detectors, which increases the complexity and cost of the system. We propose a novel multi-channel detection design based on a single spectrometer. Each camera pixel receives interferometric spectral signals from all the channels but with a spectral shift between two channels. This design effectively broadens the spectral bandwidth of each pixel, which reduces relative intensity noise (RIN) by √M times with M being the number of channels. We theoretically analyzed the noise of the proposed design under two cases: shot-noise limited and electrical noise or RIN limited. We show both theoretically and experimentally that this design can effectively improve the sensitivity, especially for electrical noise or RIN-dominated systems.