Chromatic dispersion compensation of an OCT system with a programmable spectral filter

We demonstrate the use of a programmable optical spectral filter to compensate all orders of chromatic dispersion in an all-fibre Fourier-domain optical coherence tomography system at 1550 nm. The pointspread- function, originally 58 µm wide, asymmetric, with strong sidelobes, is successfully made symmetric and recompressed to 37 µm, close to the theoretical limit of 36 µm.