Patent ID: 7113818

Claim:
Apparatus for high resolution imaging of an object located at an object location and subject to movement during imaging, comprising: a) an imaging instrument employing optical coherence tomography (OCT) for scanning said object with an optical sample beam, said imaging instrument including: (i) a source of low coherent light; (ii) an interferometer for receiving light from said source and outputting said optical sample beam, said interferometer including a first optical path for said optical sample beam and a second optical path for a reference beam; (iii) a transverse scanner to effect transverse scanning of the object with said optical beam; (iv) depth adjustment means comprising electronically controllable optical path altering means for altering the optical path difference between said first and second optical paths in said interferometer so as to obtain imaging information different axial depth positions relative to said imaging instrument; and (v) interface optics for transferring said optical sample beam from the transverse scanner to said object and for transferring said sample beam reflected and scattered from said object back to said interferometer; b) a first sensor for sensing the axial position of said object relative to said imaging instrument independently of said imaging instrument so as to detect movement of said object relative to said imaging instrument; and c) a processor for acquiring with said imaging instrument a stack of sectional en-face OCT images of said object at different axial depths within said object obtained by altering the optical path difference in said interferometer, said processor being programmed to reject any sectional images for which the movement of said object during the scanning thereof falls outside predetermined acceptable limits in response to a signal from said first sensor.