Broadband sum-frequency generation as an efficient two-photon detector for optical tomography

We describe a novel non-linear detection method for optical tomography that does not rely on detection of interference fringes and is free of optical background. The method exploits temporally coherent broadband illumination such as ultrashort pulses, and a non-linear two-photon detection process such as sum-frequency generation (SFG). At the detection stage, the reference beam and the sample beam are mixed in a thick non-linear crystal, and only the mixing term, which is free of optical background, is detected. Consequently, the noise limitations posed by the background in standard OCT (excess and shot noise), do not exist here. Due to the non-linearity, the signal to noise ratio scales more favorably with the optical power compared to standard OCT, yielding an inherent improvement for high speed tomographic scans. Careful design of phase matching in the crystal enables non-linear mixing which is both highly efficient and broadband, yielding both high sensitivity and high depth resolution.