Early development of optical low-coherence reflectometry and some recent biomedical applications

This paper explains the term low-coherence interferometry, reviews the early development of optical low-coherence reflectometry, and shows some of the paths that led to the field of biomedical optics. This paper demonstrates that early technical developments in the telecommunications industry resulted in a myriad of technical implementations and applications in biology, medicine, and the explosion of the field in noninvasive biomedical optical techniques. Recent examples of innovative applications of this proliferating technology into the fields of ophthalmology, developmental biology, and endoscopy are described, (C) 1999 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers. [S1083-3668(99)00602-4].