We present measurements of total retinal blood flow in healthy volunteers using a three beam Doppler optical coherence tomography (D-OCT) technique. This technology has the advantage of a precise determination of the flow vector without the use of any a-priori information on the vessel geometry. Circular D-OCT scans around the optic disc were recorded and venous as well as arterial total blood flow was determined and compared for each subject. The reproducibility of the method was assessed in 6 subjects by repeated measurements. Only small deviations of around 6% between the measurements were found which indicates the high precision of the proposed method. Werkmeister, "Blood flow velocity vector field reconstruction from dual-beam bidirectional Doppler OCT measurements in retinal veins," Biomed. Opt. Express 6(5), 1599-1615 (2015). 38. C. E. Riva, J. E. Grunwald, S. H. Sinclair, and B. L. Petrig, "Blood velocity and volumetric flow rate in human retinal vessels," Invest. Ophthalmol. Vis. Sci. 26(8), 1124-1132 (1985). 39. J. P. Garcia, Jr., P. T. Garcia, and R. B. Rosen, "Retinal blood flow in the normal human eye using the canon laser blood flowmeter," Ophthalmic Res. 34(5), 295-299 (2002

Conventional imaging of the human cornea with optical coherence tomography (OCT) relies on telecentric scanning optics with sampling beams that are parallel to the optical axis of the eye. Because of the shape of the cornea, the beams have in some areas considerable inclination to the corneal surface which is accompanied by low signal intensities in these areas and thus an inhomogeneous appearance of corneal structures. In addition, alterations in the polarization state of the probing light depend on the angle between the imaging beam and the birefringent axis of the sample. Therefore, changes in the polarization state observed with polarization-sensitive (PS-) OCT originate mainly from the shape of the cornea. In order to minimize the effects of the corneal shape on intensity and polarization-sensitive based data, we developed a conical scanning optics design. This design provides imaging beams that are essentially orthogonal to the corneal surface. Thus, high signal intensity throughout the entire imaged volume is obtained and the influence of the corneal shape on polarization-sensitive data is greatly reduced. We demonstrate the benefit of the concept by comparing PS-OCT imaging results of the human cornea in healthy volunteers using both scanning schemes.

NIR photoacoustic and upconversion luminescent nanoprobe-facilitated cross-referencing manifestation of oxidative stress-induced liver pathophysiology for dynamic therapeutic response assessment.

Abstract:We use our previously developed adaptive optics (AO) scanning laser ophthalmoscope (SLO)/ optical coherence tomography (OCT) instrument to investigate its capability for imaging retinal vasculature. The system records SLO and OCT images simultaneously with a pixel to pixel correspondence which allows a direct comparison between those imaging modalities. Different field of views ranging from 0.8°x0.8° up to 4°x4° are supported by the instrument. In addition a dynamic focus scheme was developed for the AO-SLO/OCT system in order to maintain the high transverse resolution throughout imaging depth. The active axial eye tracking that is implemented in the OCT channel allows time resolved measurements of the retinal vasculature in the en-face imaging plane. Vessel walls and structures that we believe correspond to individual erythrocytes could be visualized with the system.

We present a newly developed single mode fiber based swept source polarization sensitive optical coherence tomography system using a single input state at 1040 nm. Two non-polarizing fiber based beam splitters are combined to form a Mach-Zehnder interferometer, while two polarizing beam splitters are used to obtain a polarization sensitive detection. Both types of beam splitters solely feature conventional single mode fibers. Polarization control paddles are used to set and maintain the polarization states in the fibers of the interferometer and detection unit. By use of a special paddle alignment scheme we are able to eliminate any bulk optic wave plates and polarization maintaining fibers in the interferometer and detection paths while preserving the advantages of a single input state system that illuminates the sample with circularly polarized light. To demonstrate the capabilities of our system, we performed retinal measurements on healthy human volunteers.