Design & development of a galvanometer inspired dual beam optical coherence tomography system for flow velocity quantification of the microvasculature

Abstract

This paper reports initial experimentation of a dual beam flow velocity estimation setup based on optical coherence tomography (OCT) for biomedical applications. The proposed work incorporates a low cost switching mechanism (rotating galvanometer mirror) for optical signal discrimination between adjacent fiber channels enabling quasisimultaneous multiple specimen scanning. A cascaded interferometric design is used with two sample output arms orientated in parallel to eachother. A cross-correlation computation between these two parallel sample beams yields a relative time delay, enabling assessment and quantification of flow velocities.