Adapting a commercial spectral domain optical coherence tomography system for time-locked displacement and physiological measurements

Abstract

Measuring vibration within the cochlear partition is important to understand sound transduction and nonlinear amplification within the cochlea. Here we describe the customization of a commercially available Spectral Domain Optical Coherence Tomography system, the Thorlabs Telesto, for displacement measurements in the cochlea using a technique called Spectral Domain Phase Microscopy (SDPM). The paper describes the SDOCT data analysis pipeline composed of background subtraction, interpolation, and spectral shaping of the raw photodetector data, followed by the implementation of SDPM for vibration measurements. It also details the software and hardware modification necessary to couple the Telesto to a Tucker-Davis Technologies data acquisition system to obtain time-locked vibration and electrophysiological measurements from the gerbil cochlea. The use of this commercial imaging system for auditory displacement measurements brings this powerful measurement tool within reach of many auditory researchers.