Nonlinear dynamic filtering of logarithmically amplified fringe signals in optical coherence tomography applied to paper measurements

Application of the nonlinear Kalman filtering method to logarithmically amplified low-coherence fringe signals measured from paper samples is considered. Experimental results of dynamic fringe envelope recovery in optical coherence tomography (OCT) systems are presented. The analog fringe envelope and digital dynamic fringe envelope recoveries from noisy signals are compared. The results show that the nonlinear discrete Kalman filtering method can be applied to estimate envelopes of logarithmically transformed low-coherence fringe signals with high noise immunity. Logarithmic amplification reduces quantization error in dealing with small signal values. The experimental results obtained demonstrate the possibility of purely digital signal processing in OCT.