Handheld probes and galvanometer scanning for optical coherence tomography

As part of the ongoing effort of the biomedical imaging community to move Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) systems from the lab to the clinical environment and produce OCT systems appropriate for multiple types of investigations in a medical department, handheld probes equipped with different types of scanners need to be developed. These allow different areas of a patient’s body to be investigated using OCT with the same system and even without changing the patient’s position. This paper reviews first the state of the art regarding OCT handheld probes. Novel probes with a uni-dimensional (1D) galvanometer-based scanner (GS) developed in our groups are presented. Their advantages and limitations are discussed. Aspects regarding the use of galvoscanners with regard to Micro-Electro- Mechanical Systems (MEMS) are pointed out, in relationship with our studies on optimal scanning functions of galvanometer devices in OCT. These scanning functions are briefly discussed with regard to their main parameters: profile, theoretical duty cycle, scan frequency, and scan amplitude. The optical design of the galvoscanner and refractive optics combination in the probe head, optimized for various applications, is considered. Perspectives of the field are pointed out in the final part of the paper.