PRESENTATION
SiN PICs for Optical Coherence Tomography
In this presentation, we report our advancements in silicon nitride PICs for the implementation of compact spectral-domain (SD) and swept-source (SS) optical coherence tomography (OCT) systems in ophthalmology, targeting the 850 nm and 1060 nm wavelength regions. Key developments include a fully integrated optoelectronic spectrometer for SD-OCT utilising a 512-channel arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) with monolithically co-integrated photodiodes, a low-loss coupling waveguide-to-photodiode coupling structure on a CMOS-compatible platform, and broadband photonic building blocks for a parallelised SS-OCT scheme featuring power-efficient polarisation rotation-based path routing. These silicon nitride PICs demonstrate strong potential for the realization of high-performance, portable, and cost-effective OCT devices, which could facilitate decentralized retinal diagnostics.
Rainer Hainberger
AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH
Dr. Rainer Hainberger earned his Dipl.-Ing. in physics from TU Wien, Austria (1995), and a Ph.D. in electronic engineering from the University of Tokyo, Japan (2000). He conducted research on optical fiber systems at Fujitsu Laboratories, Japan, from 2000 to 2004, before joining the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH. Since 2012, he has led the Diagnostics Biosensors group of the Competence Unit Molecular Diagnostics, with a strong focus on PICs for medical diagnostics. His research emphasizes simulation, design, and application of PICs, and he is the inventor of a parallelized PIC-based swept-source optical coherence tomography scheme.