METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR ACQUIRING IMAGES USING A CCD DETECTOR ARRAY AND NO TRANSVERSE SCANNER

An apparatus and method for acquiring an at least one dimensional digital image of a region of an object using an optical source which outputs a first optical beam having a short coherence length. A splitter splits the first optical beam into a reference beam and an object beam. The reference beam travels to a reference scatterer and the object beam is directed toward the region of the object. An array detector such as a charge coupled device receives a portion of the object beam and a portion of the reference beam and detects the resulting incident intensity over the at least one dimension and outputs a signal. Since the coherence length of the source is short, the signal output from the detector array corresponds to one or more dimensional slice of the object which represents the above region.