Ball lens based lensed patch cord probes for optical coherence tomography in the field of dentistry

Abstract

A lensed patch cord probe has been made with a ball lens packaged in a metal cylinder. By simply placing a ball lens directly in front of a fiber patch cord, a compact and potentially disposable sampling probe for optical coherence tomography (OCT) could be implemented. To achieve a sufficiently long working distance and a good transverse resolution simultaneously, the proper ball lens diameter and the distance between the ball lens and the fiber patch cord were investigated. Experimentally, a working distance of up to 5.2 mm, 3 dB bandwidth of 2 mm, and transverse resolution of 16 pm were achieved. With the patch cord probe, a common path swept source OCT system was implemented and used to demonstrate the feasibility as the dedicated probe for dentistry. Crown Copyright (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.