Cross-Sectional Imaging of Materials Structure Using PS-OCT

Optical low-coherence tomography is a measurement technique for non-contact and non-destructive investigation of materials inner structure. Nowadays, this method is highly applied in medical treatment especially in dermatology and ophthalmology. During our research we have developed an optical low-coherence tomography system with polarization state analysis for structure examination of a broad range of technical materials. In this paper we present our recent measurements including polarization sensitive analysis. Those measurements were taken for semitransparent and highly scattering materials like polymer layers and polymer optical retarders, anticorrosion protective coatings or abrasive paper. We proved that with the aid of developed polarization sensitive optical coherence tomography system it is possible to investigate birefringence principles of materials as well as to improve visualization contrast of cross-sectional images.