Patent ID: 7903254

Claim:
A method of obtaining depth-resolved spectra of a sample for determining depth characteristics of scatterers within the sample, comprising: emitting a source beam onto a splitter, wherein the splitter splits light from the source beam to produce a reference beam and a sample beam; directing the sample beam towards the sample at an angle while maintaining an optical path length of the sample beam to the sample; receiving an angle-resolved scattered sample beam as a result of the sample beam scattering at a multitude of scattered angles off of the sample in parallel at the same time, wherein the angle-resolved scattered sample beam contains the angular scattering distribution of the scattered sample beam; cross-correlating the angle-resolved scattered sample beam with the reference beam to produce an angle-resolved cross-correlated signal about the sample; spectrally dispersing the angle-resolved cross-correlated signal to yield an angle-resolved, spectrally-resolved cross-correlation profile having depth-resolved information about the sample at the multitude of scattered angles; and processing the angle-resolved, spectrally-resolved cross-correlation profile to obtain depth-resolved information about the sample.