Simple and Robust Calibration Procedure for Passive and Instantaneous Quadrature Demultiplexing in Full-Range Optical Coherence Tomography

In its standard implementation, OCT suffers from the well-known “mirror artifact” around the zero-delay plane. Full-range OCT enables imaging on both sides of zero-delay by measuring the interference signal’s in-phase and quadrature components. These signals can be accessed passively using polarization demultiplexing or optical hybrids. However, such optical systems present imperfections, including chromatic and RF variations in phase and amplitude, which result in residual mirror artifacts. In this work, we propose a calibration methodology that relies solely on simple mirror measurements to correct the imperfections of the demultiplexing system and achieve high extinction of the mirror artifacts.