Fundamental performance improvement to dispersive spectrograph based imaging technologies

Dispersive-based spectrometers may be qualified by their spectral resolving power and their throughput efficiency. A device known as a virtual slit is able to improve the resolving power by factors of several with a minimal loss in throughput, thereby fundamentally improving the quality of the spectrometer. A virtual slit was built and incorporated into a low performing spectrometer (R ~ 300) and was shown to increase the performance without a significant loss in signal. The operation and description of virtual slits is also given. High-performance, lowlight, and high-speed imaging instruments based on a dispersive-type spectrometer see the greatest impact from a virtual slit. The impact of a virtual slit on spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) is shown to improve the imaging quality substantially.