Coherence Spectrotomography: Optical Spectroscopic Tomography with Low-Coherence Interferometry

In low-coherence reflectometry, light scattered back from a medium is expected to contain spectral properties as well as range information on the reflective boundaries and backscattering sites. Low-coherence interferometric systems with particular signal-processing techniques have been proposed that can extract both the range and spectral properties inside the medium simultaneously. This class of systems is called coherence spectrotomography. In this paper, basic principles of coherence spectrotomography are reviewed referring to the experimental results on multi-layered media.