Patent ID: 7567349

Claim:
An apparatus for irradiating a sample, comprising: a) an interferometer forwarding an electromagnetic radiation; b) a sample arm receiving the electromagnetic radiation, the sample arm including an arrangement which is configured to produce at least two radiations from the electromagnetic radiation so as to irradiate the sample, and to delay a first radiation of the at least two radiations with respect to a second radiation of the at least two radiations; c) a reference arm providing a further electromagnetic radiation, wherein the interferometer receives the first, second and further radiations, and forms a resultant signal based on the first, second and further radiations; and d) a processing arrangement generating a first image based on the first radiation, a second image based on the resultant signal and a further image based on the first and second images, wherein the first and second images are different from one another, and wherein the further image has a signal to noise ratio that is improved according to the equation: SNR ACPE = 〈 S OCT 〉 var ⁡ [ S OCT ] ∝ ∑ i = 1 N ⁢ u i ∑ i = 1 N ⁢ u i 2 , wherein SNR ACPE is the signal to noise ratio, S OCT is an amplitude of a high-pass filtered OCT signal that is associated with the resultant signal, m is a thickness of the arrangement, u i is an amplitude of a demodulated OCT signal that is associated with the resultant signal at a spatial location, and N=2m−1.