Voltage noise and jitter analysis for swept source optical coherence tomography using KTa1−xNbxO3 deflector

•A noise of a swept source optical coherence tomography system is modeled into a voltage noise and jitter.•An influence of a voltage noise and jitter on a depth deviation is simulated.•Characteristics of influence with jitter on depth deviation agree with that with voltage noise.•The depth deviation is limited by the jitter.•An envelope of an interference waveform obtained by measurement is needed for precisely noise simulation. This paper describes voltage noise and jitter analysis for the depth deviation of a point spread function in a swept source optical coherence tomography system using a KTa1-xNbxO3 deflector. An interference waveform with voltage noise and jitter was simulated according to a previous report. Typical values for the voltage noise ΔVTYP and jitter ΔtTYP were also obtained from a previous report and experiment. It was determined that the depth deviation is limited by the ΔtTYP of the system. Therefore, the quality of the tomographic image can be efficiently improved by reducing jitter.