An apparatus for optical coherence tomography (OCT) comprises a light source, a first arm, a second arm, and a processing unit. The first arm has a first dispersive optical assembly that induces a first amount of dispersion into light from the light source and traversing the first arm, where the first arm is one of a sample arm and a reference arm of an interferometer. The second arm has a second dispersive optical assembly that induces a second amount of dispersion into light from the light source and traversing the second arm, where the second arm is the other of the sample arm and reference arm. The second amount of dispersion is larger than the first amount of dispersion. The processing unit processes an interferometry signal to perform OCT, where the interferometry signal represents a superposition of the light from the first arm and the light from the second arm.