Patent ID: 7768652

Claim:
A method of operating an optical coherence tomography (OCT) system, said system including a light source for generating a beam of light and a scanner for directing the beam to different locations in an X-Y plane and wherein the system collects information about the reflectance distribution within a sample in a depth direction Z at different locations in the X-Y plane, said method comprising the steps of: operating the scanner to obtain a first set of measurements at a plurality of locations along a first line in the X-Y plane, where the spacing between locations is selected to provide a high resolution two dimensional data set; operating the scanner to obtain a second set of measurements at a plurality of locations across the X-Y plane where the spacing between locations is selected to provide a lower resolution three dimensional data set and wherein the average distance between adjacent locations in the first set of measurements being less than fifty percent of the average distance between locations obtained in the second set of measurements; and storing or displaying the results.