NKT Photonics

NKT Photonics is a fibre laser and sensor system manufacturer with headquarters in Denmark and production in Denmark, Germany, Switzerland and the UK. NKT Photonics is the world’s leading supplier of supercontinuum light sources which offer the highest possible optical resolution of any light source when applied in OCT systems. More recently NKT has moved into ultrafast laser production and will be looking to use these products for novel and innovative OCT solutions.

In the Netlas project, NKT will develop a time-stretched spectral domain OCT system for fast acquisition OCT imaging in collaboration with the University of Kent. To generate high-resolution, high-sensitivity measurements, a broadband light source with low noise is required, and can be obtained using all-normal dispersion supercontinuum broadening in NKT’s precision engineered ANDi fibre. With this system, we aim to achieve real-time acquisition by taking advantage of the excellent laser parameters like low noise and high bandwidth achievable with NKT lasers and coupling this with the fast acquisition method of master-slave OCT detected using the time-stretched method. These strengths combined will produce an imaging system useful for novel applications in functional OCT and material analysis.

NKT has a strong base in OCT, having studied the technology for over a decade and being the top vendor of supercontinuum lasers – broadly used in spectral domain OCT. We also take great pride in promoting not only new product development, but fundamental research that will lead to tomorrow’s technology.

Supervisors

Dr Peter M. Moselund

Dr. Patrick Bowen

Key Research Facilities, Infrastructure and Equipment
The general fiber system manufacturing facilities at NKT Photonics includes a state-of-the-art fiber drawing tower, 2000 m2 production area including a 1000 m2 clean room, splicing stations, fully automatic splicing rig and fiber polishing facilities. NKT has many laboratories dedicated to characterization, development and testing of silica-based supercontinuum systems. NKT also has an established lab dedicated to supercontinuum based OCT including set-ups for central wavelengths at 650 nm, 800 nm and 1300 nm.


Publications

  • “Record power, ultra-broadband supercontinuum source based on highly GeO2 doped silica fiber,” D. Jain et al., Opt. Express 24, 26667-26677 (2016), https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.24.026667
  • “Acousto-optic tunable filter for dispersion characterization of time-domain optical coherence tomography systems,” C. Chin et al., Appl. Opt. 55, 5707-5714 (2016), https://doi.org/10.1364/AO.55.005707
  • Tapered optical fiber for supercontinuum generation, Patent US2013182999 (A1).
  • ” High energy supercontinuum sources using tapered photonic crystal fibers for multispectral photoacoustic microscopy“, M. Bondu, et al. J. Biomedical Optics 21.6 (2016), 061005, https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JBO.21.6.061005