CCPM Symposium I - 01: Anatomic, functional, and molecular imaging using optical coherence tomography

Abstract

Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is a novel biomedical imaging technique which uses low‐coherence optical interferometry to obtain micron‐scale resolution tomographic images of sub‐surface tissue structure noninvasively. OCT has become a standard diagnostic tool in clinical ophthalmology, and is under investigation for other clinical applications including cancer detection and evaluation of cardiovascular disease. Within the past few years, dramatic technology advances have increased the performance of OCT systems many‐fold, and have also demonstrated the potential for micron‐scale functional and molecular imaging in living systems for the first time. We have developed spectral domain OCT scanners capable of imaging up to several times video rate, and applied them for real‐time two‐dimensional and near real‐time three dimensional imaging in human and small animal models. The applications of this new technology for high‐throughput noninvasive phenotyping and rapid 3D imaging in small animals and developmental biology models is particularly compelling. In addition, we have developed novel functional imaging extensions to OCT which take advantage of the altered spectral content of elastic and inelastically backscattered light to provide enhanced image contrast. These include the first demonstrations of molecular imaging with OCT, in which an imaging form of pump‐probe spectroscopy has been used to image the distributions of genetically expressed proteins with micron resolution in living animals, with sensitivity comparable to multiphoton microscopy.