Contents I. Introduction
Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a high-speed interferometric-based three-dimensional imaging technique that can provide better than 10um resolution in all three dimensions. First pioneered for ophthalmology [1], OCT is showing increasing promise not only in other medical fields but also beyond medical applications including in-room LIDAR [2] and non-destructive material analysis [3]. Much of the success of OCT has relied on technological innovations borrowed from the telecom space, including tunable lasers, fiber-based interferometers, and balanced photodetectors. The future of OCT systems – specifically the complete optoelectronic integration to chip-scale for low-cost mass-produced systems – will also borrow heavily from lessons learned in the telecom industry's drive to produce more complex optical transceivers at lower cost, lower power, and larger volume. Fully integrated, miniaturized OCT systems have the potential to enable a new era of sensing by providing ultra-portable, high-resolution, real-time 3D imaging in any internal physiological or external physical environment.
