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2013
Conference Paper
Titel
Large field optical tomography system
Abstract
Optical measurement technologies become more and more import in many fields of nondestructive testing. One of these technologies is the optical coherence tomography (OCT). By now mostly used in medical applications, such as ophthalmology and dermatology, relevance of OCT for testing of non-biological samples in manufacturing and research is increasing. For this reason new OCT measurement systems for fast volume inspection are needed. In this paper we present an automated high speed swept source based OCT system with a scan rate of 100.000 A-scans per second. The advantage of high scan rates of such systems until know lead into high costs for appropriate light sources. Furthermore the big size of available sources makes system integration and miniaturization difficult. With a new kind of MEMS-based light sources components with smaller dimensions and a cost reduction of more than 50% are possible. We combine the MEMS-based swept source OCT system with a table top robot for large-area inspections. The field of view of commercial systems is limited to few centimeters. Our new system is capable of measuring up to 400mm in square. With inherent software the acquisition of A-Scans at any position in the working area and of any quantity is possible. Once calibrated for a sample, the system can perform an automated measurement. Therefore our OCT system can be used as a tool for testing scenarios in research, for failure analyses and for semi-automated production processes.