Thorlabs Mobile Photonics Lab @ UCL

Thorlabs Mobile Photonics Lab @ UCL - live demonstrations of an OCT setup

The UCL Photonics Society and the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering are partnering with Thorlabs to bring you live demos of an Optical Computation Tomography (OCT) setup .

Registration information

🚨PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING ITEMS CAREFULLY:

• We have created different tickets for the different slots available. The demonstrations will all be the same, the only difference being the time.
• Please only book one ticket per person, even if you're unsure about the time that best suits you.
• If you are unable to attend, please cancel your ticket to allow someone else to take your spot, even if it is last minute.

🗓️Slots available:

• We are opening registrations with 3 slots available: 2:30pm, 3:30pm, 4:30pm of 8 participants each.
• We might open 3 more new slots when we get a better idea of how long we can expect each demo + Q&A session to last. If so, we will notify through the UCL Photonics Society's Instagram and LinkedIn accounts, as well as by email through eventbright.

The event at UCL

General information

🩻What? We will be performing live demonstrations of an OTC setup to curious UCL affiliated students, researchers, and staff, using the Thorlabs Mobile Photonics Lab.

🗺️ Where? The demonstrations will take place in the EEE department teaching lab in Malet Place Engineering Building, on the 6th floor.

🕰️ When? The demos will take place in the afternoon of Wednesday 22nd of October 2025. We have decided to perform the same demonstration multiple times to small groups, to make the sessions more interactive.

🥼Who? The demonstrations will be performed by PhD students involved with the UCL Photonics Society, trained by Thorlabs staff to run the experiment.

👩‍🔬👨‍🔬The demonstration

The demonstration is focused on showing the operating principles behind OCT, and uses a Michelson Interferometer setup, a Spectrometer (CCT11), two light sources (laser and LED), and mirrors and glass slides / cover slips. We will show phenomena such as Interference, White Light Interference, Time domain OCT, and Spectral Domain OCT.

🚨This is a simple setup aimed to be user friendly and engaging, but it is NOT a state of the art technology demonstration.

For the nerds 🤓

🚲What is the Thorlabs Mobile Photonics Lab?

The Thorlabs Mobile Photonics Lab is an optical bench on wheels that brings the science of light to you! Through hands on learning experiences, the Mobile Photonics Lab reveals photonics applications, technologies, people, and potential careers within the photonics industry. It visits universities, high schools, and public events to raise awareness, provide access, and generate advancement within the photonics community for people of all ages.

🔬What is OCT?

Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is a noninvasive optical imaging technique that produces real-time, 2D cross-sectional and 3D volumetric images of a sample. This technique provides structural information about the sample based on light backscattered from different layers of material within that sample, producing images with micron-level resolution and millimeters of imaging depth. OCT imaging can be considered as an optical analog to ultrasound imaging that achieves higher resolution at the cost of decreased penetration depth. In addition to high resolution, the non-contact, noninvasive nature of OCT makes it well suited for imaging samples such as biological tissue, small animals, and industrial materials. We have included a webinar from Thorlabs bellow to provide you with more information.