Patent ID: 7659991

Claim:
A colorimetric optical coherence tomography microscopy apparatus for recording three-dimensional images of optically translucent or reflective sample objects, comprising a broadband light source, and an interferometric optical setup for detecting a three-dimensional image of an optically translucent or reflective object, wherein said broadband light source is a tunable light source that is able to produce light over the complete visual spectrum according to the CIE tristimulus curves and wherein said interferometric optical setup provides a dynamic coherence focus with respect to the reference beam path and the object beam path over the full scanning distance when recording three-dimensional images, wherein dispersion effects caused by different effective propagation velocities of different illumination light spectra are corrected by said apparatus by: carrying out a multitude of depths scans with illumination light having different spectra; identifying salient features in the different depth scans originating from the same optical structures in the object; and adjusting the depth scan axes of the different depth scans so that the corresponding salient features in the different depth scans coincide.