Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a rapidly evolving technology with a broad range of applications, including biomedical imaging and diagnosis. Conventional intensity-based OCT provides depth-resolved imaging with a typical resolution and sensitivity to structural alterations of about 5–10 microns. It would be desirable for functional biological imaging to detect smaller features in tissues due to the nature of pathological processes. In this article, we perform the analysis of the spatial frequency content of the OCT signal based on scattering theory. We demonstrate that the OCT signal, even at limited spectral bandwidth, contains information about high spatial frequencies present in the object which relates to the small, sub-wavelength size structures. Experimental single frame imaging of phantoms with well-known sub-micron internal structures confirms the theory. Examples of visualization of the nanoscale structural changes within mesenchymal stem cells (MSC), which are invisible using conventional OCT, are also shown. Presented results provide a theoretical and experimental basis for the extraction of high spatial frequency information to substantially improve the sensitivity of OCT to structural alterations at clinically relevant depths.
With the advent of stem cell therapy for spinal cord injuries, stroke, burns, macular degeneration, heart diseases, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis; the need to track the survival, migration pathways, spatial destination and differentiation of transplanted stem cells in a clinical setting has gained increased relevance. Indeed, getting regulatory approval to use these therapies in the clinic depends on biodistribution studies. Although optoacoustic imaging (OAI) or photoacoustic imaging can detect functional information of cell activities in real-time, the selection and application of suitable contrast agents is essential to achieve optimal sensitivity and contrast for sensing at clinically relevant depths and can even provide information about molecular activity. This review explores OAI methodologies in conjunction with the specific application of exogenous contrast agents in comparison to other imaging modalities and describes the properties of exogenous contrast agents for quantitative and qualitative monitoring of stem cells. Specific characteristics such as biocompatibility, the absorption coefficient, and surface functionalization are compared and how the labelling efficiency translates to both short and long-term visualization of mesenchymal stem cells is explored. An overview of novel properties of recently developed optoacoustic contrast agents and their capability to detect disease and recovery progression in clinical settings is provided which includes newly developed exogenous contrast agents to monitor stem cells in real-time for multimodal sensing.
Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is emerging as a powerful noncontact imaging technique, allowing high-quality cross-sectional imaging of scattering specimens nondestructively. However, the complexity and cost of current embodiments of an OCT system limit its use in various nondestructive testing (NDT) applications at resource-limited settings. In this paper, we demonstrate the feasibility of a novel low-cost OCT system for a range of nondestructive testing (NDT) applications. The proposed imaging system is based on an enhanced time-domain OCT system with a low cost and small form factor reference arm optical delay, called multiple reference OCT (MR-OCT), which uses a miniature voice coil actuator and a partial mirror for extending the axial scan range. The proposed approach is potentially a low-cost, compact, and unique optical imaging modality for a range of NDT applications in a low-resource setting. Using this method, we demonstrated the capability of MR-OCT to perform cross-sectional and volumetric imaging at 1200 A-scans per second.
Abstract:In this paper, we report the feasibility of integrating a novel low cost optical coherence tomography (OCT) system with a dermascope for point-of-care applications. The proposed OCT system is based on an enhanced time-domain optical coherence tomographic system, called multiple reference OCT (MR-OCT), which uses a single miniature voice coil actuator and a partial mirror for extending the axial scan range. The system can simultaneously register both the superficial dermascope image and the depth-resolved OCT sub-surface information by an interactive beam steering method. A practitioner is able to obtain the depth resolved information of the point of interest by simply using the mouse cursor. The proposed approach of combining a dermascope with a low cost OCT provides a unique powerful optical imaging modality for a range of dermatological applications. Hand-held dermascopic OCT devices would also enable point of care and remote health monitoring.
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