METHOD FOR OBTAINING THE IMAGE OF AN OBJECT, DEVICE FOR CARRYING OUT SAID METHOD AND DEVICE FOR DELIVERING LOW COHERENT OPTICAL RADIATION

The invention relates to studies of internal structures of objects with the aid of optical means. According to the invention an optical system (15) of the delivering device for low coherence optical radiation, in a particular embodiment, an optical fiber probe (8), includes at least two lens components (19), (20), which have a positive focal power and are positioned substantionally confocally. This ensures a constant propagation time for the low coherence optical radiation propagating from a given point of the transverse scanning surface (28) or (39) to a corresponding conjugate point of the image plane (22). That provides elimination of the transverse scanning related aberration of the optical path length for low coherence optical radiation directed towards the object (11) both for a flat transverse scanning surface (28) and for a transverse scanning surface (39) having a curvature. In another embodiment, together with the substantionally confocal arrangement of lens components (19), (20), the longitudinal scanning is performed by varying the optical path length for the low coherence optical radiation propagating from the transverse scanning surface (28) to the optical system (15), i.e., from the end face (17) of the distal part (18) of the optical fiber (14) to the optical system (15). To achieve this, a device for longitudinal scanning (10) is incorporated into the optical fiber probe (8). This ensures a corresponding shift of the focusing position of the low coherence optical radiation during longitudinal scanning, i.e., allows for alignment of the focusing position of the low coherence optical radiation with the position of the coherence gate and, consequently, their simultaneous movement.