High speed spectral domain optical coherence tomography for retinal imaging at 500,000 A‑lines per second

Lin An, Peng Li, Tueng T Shen, Ruikang Wang, Lin An, Peng Li, Tueng T Shen, Ruikang Wang

Abstract

We present a new development of ultrahigh speed spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SDOCT) for human retinal imaging at 850 nm central wavelength by employing two high-speed line scan CMOS cameras, each running at 250 kHz. Through precisely controlling the recording and reading time periods of the two cameras, the SDOCT system realizes an imaging speed at 500,000 A-lines per second, while maintaining both high axial resolution (~8 μm) and acceptable depth ranging (~2.5 mm). With this system, we propose two scanning protocols for human retinal imaging. The first is aimed to achieve isotropic dense sampling and fast scanning speed, enabling a 3D imaging within 0.72 sec for a region covering 4x4 mm(2). In this case, the B-frame rate is 700 Hz and the isotropic dense sampling is 500 A-lines along both the fast and slow axes. This scanning protocol minimizes the motion artifacts, thus making it possible to perform two directional averaging so that the signal to noise ratio of the system is enhanced while the degradation of its resolution is minimized. The second protocol is designed to scan the retina in a large field of view, in which 1200 A-lines are captured along both the fast and slow axes, covering 10 mm(2), to provide overall information about the retinal status. Because of relatively long imaging time (4 seconds for a 3D scan), the motion artifact is inevitable, making it difficult to interpret the 3D data set, particularly in a way of depth-resolved en-face fundus images. To mitigate this difficulty, we propose to use the relatively high reflecting retinal pigmented epithelium layer as the reference to flatten the original 3D data set along both the fast and slow axes. We show that the proposed system delivers superb performance for human retina imaging.

Keywords: (170.3880) medical and biological imaging; (170.4460) Ophthalmic optics and devices; (170.4500) Optical coherence tomography.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
(a) Schematic of the ultrahigh speed SDOCT system; and (b) the trigger signal sequences for dual-camera system. SLD: superluminescent diode; PC: polarization controller; OC: optical circulator.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
System performance of the ultrahigh speed SDOCT. (a), light source spectrums captured by the two spectrometers of the system; (b) the PSF of the two spectrometers before (red and blue) and after (yellow and green) the digital beam shaping. (c) the system sensitivity falling off curves. (d) the measured optical delay line positions. (d) the measured system axial resolution.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
B-frame retinal images obtained from (a) the combined used of two spectrometers, and (b) the spectrometer that employed the camera 1, respectively. (Scale bar = 200 μm)
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
In vivo experimental results obtained by high speed isotropic dense sampling 3D retinal imaging. (a) Cross-sectional images along the fast scan-axis, where (i) to (v) correspond to the results after averaging adjacent one, three, six, nine and twelve fast-scan images, respectively. (b) Cross-sectional images along the slow axis, where (i) to (v) are resulted from averaging adjacent one, three, six, nine and twelve slow cross-sectional images, respectively. (c) Cross sectional images, where (i) to (iii) are resulted from averaging adjacent two, three and four frames along both the fast and slow axes. (d) OCT fundus image [also see Media 1]. (e) 3D rendering volumetric image. (Scale bar = 200 μm)
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
In vivo results of a large field of view isotropic dense sampling retina imaging. (a) OCT fundus image. (b) 3D rendering volumetric image.
Fig. 6
Fig. 6
(a) One typical fast B-scan cross sectional image. (b) Processed B-scan image after flattening according to the ISP layer. (c) One typical slow axis cross sectional image. (d) Collapse-averaged slow-axis image. (e) Finally processed slow-scan image. Scale bar = 200µm
Fig. 7
Fig. 7
After flattening the data set according to the ISP layer on both the directions, ultrahigh speed SDOCT provides ability for comprehensive assessment of the retina status over a large field view. (a) 3D rendered volumetric image. (b) to (f) are typical depth resolved fundus (en-face) images, which are corresponding to the depth positions marked by the red, yellow, green, blue and purple lines in (a). [Also see Media 2.]

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