School Juridical Person Kitasato Institute

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation

DongHak Choi

Hiroyuki Furukawa

Takeo Miyazawa

Ryoko Yoshimura

Kimiya Shimizu

Kohji Ohbayashi

Fumiyoshi Kano

Takuji Amano

Hideaki Hiro-Oka

Motoi Nakanishi

An OCT technique that permits tomographic observation of biological body parts that are difficult to restrain, and also provides a tomographic observation technique for the observation of a constrainable part that does not require constraint and thus removes a burden on the biological body. A wavelength-tunable light generator (wavelength-tunable light source) is employed as the light source of the optical coherence tomography device. The wavelength-tunable light generator has a wave number tunable range width of at least 4.7&#xd7;10&#x3bc;mand an emitted-light frequency width of no more than 13 GHz, for example, and is capable of changing the wave number stepwise at wave number intervals of no more than 3.1&#xd7;10&#x3bc;mand time intervals of no more than 530 &#x3bc;s.

Wavelength-tunable light generator and optical coherence tomography device

The present invention provides an OCT technique that permits tomographic observation of a biological body parts that is difficult to restrain and also provides a tomographic observation technique for the observation of a constrainable part that does not require constraint and remove the burden from biological body. A wavelength-tunable light generator (wavelength-tunable light source) is employed as the light source of the optical coherence tomography device. The wavelength-tunable light generator has a wave number tunable range width of at least 4.7&#xd7;10&#x3bc;mand an emitted-light frequency width of no more than 13 GHz, for example, and includes means capable of changing the wave number stepwise at wave number intervals of no more than 3.1&#xd7;10&#x3bc;mand time intervals of no more than 530 &#x3bc;s.

Growing community of inventors

Kanagawa, Japan

DongHak Choi