Abstract
Allying high-resolution with a large field-of-view (FOV) is of great importance in the fields of biology and medicine, but it is particularly challenging when imaging non-flat living samples such as the human retina. Indeed, high-resolution is normally achieved with adaptive optics (AO) and scanning methods, which considerably reduce the useful FOV and increase the system complexity. An alternative technique is time-domain full-field optical coherence tomography (FF-OCT), which has already shown its potential for in-vivo high-resolution retinal imaging. Here, we introduce coherence gate shaping for FF-OCT, to optically shape the coherence gate geometry to match the sample curvature, thus achieving a larger FOV than previously possible. Using this instrument, we obtained high-resolution images of living human photoreceptors close to the foveal center without AO and with a 1 mm × 1 mm FOV in a single shot. This novel advance enables the extraction of photoreceptor-based biomarkers with ease and spatiotemporal monitoring of individual photoreceptors. We compare our findings with AO-assisted ophthalmoscopes, highlighting the potential of FF-OCT, as a compact system, to become a routine clinical imaging technique.
Highlights
Owing to the optical properties of the eye, the retina is the only part of the central nervous system that can be visualized non-invasively in-vivo with micrometer resolution, a crucial aspect for studying neuronal activity [1,2]
Multi-conjugate adaptive optics (AO) was demonstrated in order to achieve a larger useful FOV, increasing the eye’s isoplanatic patch, this solution adds complexity, as two deformable mirrors are necessary [13]
We present novel advances in full-field optical coherence tomography (FF-OCT) allowing for optical shaping of the geometry of the coherence gate, adapting it to the retinal geometry, enabling the generation of single-shot, high-resolution, wide FOV images (1 mm × 1 mm) of the photoreceptor mosaic as close as 1o from the foveal center
Summary
Owing to the optical properties of the eye, the retina is the only part of the central nervous system that can be visualized non-invasively in-vivo with micrometer resolution, a crucial aspect for studying neuronal activity [1,2]. Due to their capacity to correct for static and dynamic ocular aberrations [3,4], AO ophthalmoscopes have become the primary technique to image individual retinal neurons such as cone and rod photoreceptors in the living human retina [5,6,7,8]. Achieving cellular resolution in a large portion of the living human retina without using AO is of great interest
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