Optical coherence tomography, or in short OCT, is a measurement technique established in the early 1990s for the non-invasive imaging of interfaces in the bulk of biological tissues or other samples. A full-field OCT setup is built from a microscope combined with a Michelson interferometer, where the mirror in one arm is replaced by the sample. Using white light, which is temporally partially coherent, interference fringes disclose the presence of an interface whenever the lengths of both interferometer arms are nearly equal. Scanning one arm allows for a volumetric reconstruction of all interfaces inside the sample. While the importance of OCT in medicine is indisputable, it is hard to teach students the basic aspects of such technology as most available setups tend to be rather complex. It is our purpose to present a fully functional full-field OCT setup that is stripped-down to its essential components and to promote its use in an undergraduate lab course. The contribution is complemented by a description of the basic theory necessary to understand the working principle of OCT.

中文翻译：

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全场光学相干断层扫描——本科实验室的教育设置

光学相干断层扫描，或简称 OCT，是 1990 年代初期建立的一种测量技术，用于对大量生物组织或其他样本中的界面进行非侵入性成像。全视场 OCT 设置是由显微镜与迈克尔逊干涉仪相结合构建的，其中一个臂中的镜子被样品取代。使用时间上部分相干的白光，只要两个干涉仪臂的长度几乎相等，干涉条纹就会揭示界面的存在。扫描一只手臂可以对样本内的所有界面进行体积重建。虽然 OCT 在医学中的重要性是无可争辩的，但很难向学生教授此类技术的基本方面，因为大多数可用的设置往往相当复杂。我们的目的是展示一个功能齐全的全场 OCT 设置，该设置被简化为基本组件，并促进其在本科实验室课程中的使用。对理解 OCT 工作原理所必需的基本理论的描述补充了该贡献。