Abstract

Quadrature interferometry based on $3\times 3$ fiber couplers could be used to double the effective imaging depth in swept-source optical coherence tomography. This is due to its ability to suppress the complex conjugate artifact naturally. We present theoretical and experimental results for a $3\times 3$ Mach–Zehnder interferometer using a new unbalanced differential optical detection method. The new interferometer provides simultaneous access to complementary phase components of the complex interferometric signal. No calculations by trigonometric relationships are needed. We demonstrate a complex conjugate artifact suppression of $27\mathrm{dB}$ obtained in swept-source optical coherence tomography using our unbalanced differential detection. We show that our unbalanced differential detection has increased the signal-to-noise ratio by at least $4\mathrm{dB}$ compared to the commonly used balanced detection technique. This is due to better utilization of optical power.

© 2008 Optical Society of America

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