An Approach to Optical Reflection Tomography along the Geometrical Thickness

We propose and demonstrate a novel optical reflection tomography along the geometrical thickness. This technique is based on simultaneous measurement of refractive index n and thickness t of a sample using the combination of a low coherence interferometer and confocal optics. The interferometer provides optical coherence tomography (OCT) of the dimension of the optical thickness (=n × t) along the optical axis, while the confocal optics gives us another type of reflection tomography, having the thickness dimension of nearly t/n along the optical axis. This sort of tomography can be called confocal reflection tomography (CRT) and has not yet been demonstrated, to our knowledge. Simple image processing of OCT and CRT results in the desired reflection tomographic image, showing two-dimensional refractive index distribution along the geometrical thickness.