High-velocity-flow imaging with real-time Doppler optical coherence tomography

We present a real-time time-domain Doppler optical coherence tomography (OCT) system based on the zero-crossing method for velocity measurements of fluid flows with attainable velocities up to 10 m/s. In the current implementation, one-dimensional and two-dimensional velocity profiles of fluid flows ranging from 1 cm/s to more than 3 m/s were obtained for both laminar and turbulent flows. The line rate was approximately 500 Hz, and the images were treated in real time. This approach has the advantage of providing reliable velocity maps free from phase aliasing or other artifacts common to several OCT systems. The system is particularly well suited for investigating complex velocity profiles, especially in the presence of steep velocity gradients.