Patent ID: 7372575

Claim:
An optical tomographic apparatus comprising: a light source that emits light having low coherence in at least two wavelength bands different from each other; an interferometer that: divides a flux of the light emitted from the light source into two fluxes; irradiates a subject with one of the two fluxes; irradiates a reference face with the other of the two fluxes; combines a flux of light reflected from the reference face and a flux of light reflected from the subject so as to obtain interference light; and provides an optical intensity distribution of the interference light by an optical detector; and a signal processing unit that provides a tomographic image signal based on a signal of the optical intensity distribution, wherein the interferometer comprises: a wavelength selecting element that separates the flux irradiated to the reference face into a first flux of light in a first wavelength band and a second flux of light in a second wavelength band without producing a phase shift therebetween; a first reflection optical element having the reference face for the first flux; and a second reflection optical element having the reference face for the second flux, and the signal processing unit generates the tomographic image signal with respect to each of the at least two wavelength bands of the light emitted from the light source, and outputs a combined signal thereof.