Patent ID: 7952723

Claim:
An optical coherence tomography apparatus in which a light beam from a light source is swept to irradiate a predetermined region of an object to be observed, and optical interference is used to detect light reflected from the object in order to derive therefrom tomographic information of the object, the apparatus comprising: a light source for generating a low-coherent light beam; a beam splitting element for splitting the light beam from the light source into a probe light beam toward the object and a reference light beam toward a reference optical path; light sweeping means for one-dimensionally sweeping the probe light beam at a predetermined frequency; re-sweeping means for sweeping in the same direction and at the same frequency as the light sweeping means an interference light beam that is produced by interference between the probe light beam from the object and the reference light beam that has traveled along the reference optical path; two-dimensional image-capturing means for detecting the re-swept interference light beam at a frame rate corresponding to a sweeping frequency of the light sweeping means and the re-sweeping means; and signal processing means for processing a video signal output from the two-dimensional image-capturing means to derive therefrom reflection intensity information of an interior of the object.