Dispersive-based spectrometers may be qualified by their spectral resolving power and their throughput efficiency. A device known as a virtual slit is able to improve the resolving power by factors of several with a minimal loss in throughput, thereby fundamentally improving the quality of the spectrometer. A virtual slit was built and incorporated into a low performing spectrometer (R ~ 300) and was shown to increase the performance without a significant loss in signal. The operation and description of virtual slits is also given. High-performance, lowlight, and high-speed imaging instruments based on a dispersive-type spectrometer see the greatest impact from a virtual slit. The impact of a virtual slit on spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) is shown to improve the imaging quality substantially.

Date Published: 21 February 2011
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 7890, Advanced Biomedical and Clinical Diagnostic Systems IX, 789013 (21 February 2011); doi: 10.1117/12.874995

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7890:
Advanced Biomedical and Clinical Diagnostic Systems IX
Anita Mahadevan-Jansen; Tuan Vo-Dinh; Warren S. Grundfest M.D., Editor(s)