Patent ID: 8792105

Claim:
An interferometer, comprising: a beam splitter optically coupled to receive an incident beam and operable to split said incident beam into a first beam and a second beam; a reflecting object on a first interferometer arm having a first optical path length and optically coupled to receive said first beam and operable to reflect said first beam to produce a first reflected beam directed towards said beam splitter; a moveable reference mirror on a second interferometer arm optically coupled to: receive, at an initial time, said second beam while said reference mirror is in an initial position having an initial optical path length, said reference mirror further operable to reflect said second beam to produce an initial second reflected beam directed towards said beam splitter to cause interference between said first reflected beam and said initial second reflected beam at said beam splitter and produce an initial interferogram therefrom; and receive, at an additional time subsequent to said first time, said second beam while said reference mirror is in an additional position having an additional optical path length, said additional optical path length being different from said initial optical path length, said reference mirror further operable to reflect said second beam to produce an additional second reflected beam directed towards said beam splitter to cause interference between said first reflected beam and said additional second reflected beam at said beam splitter and produce an additional interferogram therefrom; a detector including an optical spectrometer optically coupled to receive said initial interferogram and measure said initial interferogram to produce an initial measured interferogram, said optical spectrometer further optically coupled to receive said additional interferogram and measure said additional interferogram to produce an additional measured interferogram; and a processor using a first inverse Fourier transform (IFFT) of said initial measured interferogram and an additional IFFT of said additional measured interferogram to produce a final interferogram from a combination thereof, said first IFFT representing a first depth scan of said reflecting object and said second IFFT representing a second depth scan of said reflecting object, said first depth scan overlapping said second depth scan, said final interferogram having an optical path length difference between said first interferometer arm and said second interferometer arm corresponding to a sum of a respective optical path difference of said initial interferogram and said additional interferogram.