Nanosensitive optical coherence tomography to assess wound healing within the cornea

Abstract

Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is a non-invasive depth resolved optical imaging modality, that enables high resolution, cross-sectional imaging in biological tissues and materials at clinically relevant depths. Though OCT offers high resolution imaging, the best ultra-high-resolution OCT systems are limited to imaging structural changes with a resolution of one micron on a single B-scan within very limited depth. Nanosensitive OCT (nsOCT) is a recently developed technique that is capable of providing enhanced sensitivity of OCT to structural changes. Improving the sensitivity of OCT to detect structural changes at the nanoscale level, to a depth typical for conventional OCT, could potentially improve the diagnostic capability of OCT in medical applications. In this paper, we demonstrate the capability of nsOCT to detect structural changes deep in the rat cornea following superficial corneal injury. Fig. 8. Spatial period profiles obtained by Fourier transform of histology line profiles (a) healthy cornea (b) injured cornea (c) box plot showing the spatial period distribution of healthy and injured cornea.

Characterization of nanosensitive multifractality in submicron scale tissue morphology and its alteration in tumor progression

“… 16 – 18 We have recently demonstrated label-free nsOCT-based imaging technique to visualize few nanometer structural changes 19 , 20 and its application in cornea crosslinking, 21 and wound healing study. 22 There is a recently demonstrated application of nsOCT for in vivo detection of nanosensitive changes of the human tympanic membrane in otitis media. 23 In addition, biological tissue is known to have submicron structural multifractality.…”

Visible light optical coherence tomography of peripapillary retinal nerve fiber layer reflectivity in glaucoma

“…It is important to note that the spectroscopic change is sensitive to loss of microtubules in the length scale of tens of nanometer, beyond the resolution capability of any in vivo ophthalmic imaging modalities. The superb sensitivity of using spectroscopy is indeed well documented in the biophotonics field 24,25,29,30 , supporting that RNFL reflectance spectroscopy could be an early detection method for glaucoma.…”

“…Visible light OCT (VIS-OCT) is a recent development that uses shorter wavelengths than the near infrared (NIR) wavelength used in standard OCT devices [17][18][19] . Initial data show that the spectral contrast between VIS-OCT and NIR-OCT may reveal information from which nanoscale structural features can be quantitatively inferred [20][21][22][23] at a scale beyond the image resolution by standard OCT images 24,25 . This approach, when applied to clinical reflectance spectroscopy, may provide better sensitivity on RNFL alterations in early glaucoma.…”

Simple Characterization Scheme for Optical Coherence Tomography Systems With Application to a Commercial and a Near-Isometric Resolution Fibre-Based System

“…The improved image quality in conjunction to isometric image voxel geometry is of major interest for conventional OCT imaging [52], [53], [54], [55], [56], [57]. Our ongoing research to apply nano-sensitive OCT can benefit from the extended spectral bandwidth which permits access to a wider distribution of spatial frequencies and can improve the dynamic range, which is the subject of future research.…”