Abstract
The objective of this research project was to accurately measure changes in collagen thickness with a Michelson interferometry system. The system consists of a reference interferometer with a laser source and a measurement interferometer with a low coherence length source. There are several important components of the system which are necessary for achieving accurate measurements. Some of those components include a high SNR, uniform translation and a narrow measurement beam size. While the system developed was able to measure collagen thickness, the accuracy could be drastically improved by increasing the SNR, translating the reference mirrors uniformly and a smaller measurement beam size. The system was able to measure the thickness of ablated and non-ablated collagen despite a low SNR, non-uniform translation and a large beam diameter.
Merchant, Jean Carol (1998). Optical low coherence reflectometry for the measurement of collagen thickness. Master's thesis, Texas A&M University. Available electronically from
https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /ETD -TAMU -1998 -THESIS -M473.