1. An apparatus for obtaining images of an object comprising: a spectral domain optical coherence tomography (OCT) system, said system including a light source, a beam splitter for dividing the light along a sample path and a reference path, said sample path further including a scanner for scanning the light in at least one of the X and Y directions over the sample; a detector for receiving light returned from both the sample and the reference paths and generating a plurality of sets of outputs, each set corresponding to varying intensities at different wavelengths of said source at a particular X/Y position of said light on said sample, said intensities including information about the reflection distribution along the sample in the Z axis; and a processor for directly converting each set of outputs into a single intensity value corresponding to the integrated intensity in the Z axis for the associated X/Y position of the light on the sample, said single intensity values being suitable for generating a two dimensional image intensity map of the object.