Spectral Domain Optical Coherence Tomography System Development for in Vivo Ophthalmic Imaging

Abstract

Spectral‐domain optical‐coherence tomography (SDOCT) has recently emerged as a powerful new tool for noninvasive human retinal imaging. I have developed a low‐cost, high resolution real‐time Spectral Domain Optical Coherence Tomography (SDOCT) system optimized for rapid 3D imaging of the human retina in vivo. Then functional retinal OCT imaging such as polarization sensitive OCT (PSOCT) and Doppler OCT were also developed based on phase technique. Unique phase unwrapping method in retina is described to extract the total reflectivity, accumulative retardance and fast axis orientation of the retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL). The polarization scrambling layer of the retinal pigment epithelium was segmented by employing single camera sequential scan bsed PSOCT. As an extension, synthetic wavelength method will be also introduced for phase unwrapping in cell imaging. Finally I present an algorithm for 3D refraction correction based on a vector representation which accounts for refraction of CT light in the cornea. Following 3D refraction correction of volumetric corneal datasets, we can estimate the corneal optical power, thickness and the individual wavefront aberrations of the epithelial and the refraction‐corrected endothelial surfaces by using Zernike spectrum analysis.