Auflistung nach Autor:in "Klufts, Marie"

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850 nm Fourier domain mode-locked laser for ophthalmic optical coherence tomography imaging
(2025) Klufts, Marie
Non-invasive imaging techniques have become essential in medical diagnostics over the past few decades. Among these, Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) offers micrometer resolution with millimeter-scale depth penetration, making it particularly valuable in ophthalmology. OCT captures backscattered light to generate 3D volumes. For eye imaging, wavelengths around 850 nm are ideal due to minimal absorption by the vitreous and high scattering in the upper retinal layers. Imaging speed is also critical, as faster speeds reduce motion artifacts. Swept-source OCT, using wavelength-tunable lasers, enables high-speed imaging. Fourier Domain Mode-Locked (FDML) lasers providing megahertz-level scan rates are ideal for this purpose. This thesis explores the development and application of FDML lasers for ophthalmic imaging. Unlike other tunable lasers, FDML lasers have a unique design that stores a full sweep in their fiber cavity for hundreds of round trips, avoiding rebuilding of lasing from spontaneous emission after tuning to new wavelengths offering high phase stability and long coherence length necessary for high quality OCT images. A new megahertz FDML laser at 850 nm would merge the unique advantages of this wavelength with the proven benefits of FDML lasers allowing for a low latency, dynamic view of the retina, opening new doors for real-time diagnostics. The first part delves into the challenges of developing an FDML laser around 850 nm, addressing issues like polarization mode dispersion, chromatic dispersion, and low gain/loss ratios. These factors contribute to the complexity of managing short wavelength OCT lasers, which explain their scarcity to date. The second part presents in-vivo ophthalmic OCT imaging results, with comparisons to other imaging techniques. The newly designed FDML laser demonstrates strong performance for OCT imaging, achieving an axial resolution below 10 µm, sensitivity above 84 dB, and a ranging depth of 1.4 cm. Also, its high phase stability, with a time jitter of 25 ps over 1,000 sweeps, makes it suitable for phaseresolved techniques. Retinal images were captured at 414,000 axial scans per second using a master-slave based calibration technique, at 828 kHz with bidirectional sweeping, and at 1.7 MHz using optical buffering with a single-k-calibration technique. While increased scattering at 850 nm limits choroidal imaging, most retinal layers of interest are clearly visible. This FDML laser highlights the advantages of short-wavelength, high-speed imaging and paves the way for new applications.