Optical coherence‐based imaging and sensing in biomedicine and biotechnology

Abstract

Optical coherence‐based imaging techniques including optical coherence tomography (OCT), optical coherence microscopy (OCM), and spectral domain phase microscopy (SDPM) use low‐coherence spectral interferometry to obtain nanometer to micron‐scale measurements of structure, motion, and molecular composition in living cells, tissues, and organisms. OCT has become a standard diagnostic tool in clinical ophthalmology and is under investigation for other human diagnostic applications including cancer detection and evaluation of cardiovascular disease. Within the past few years, dramatic technology advances have increased the performance of OCT and OCM systems manyfold, and they are now capable of micron‐scale two‐ and three‐dimensional functional and molecular imaging noninvasively in living systems. Applications of these new technologies for high‐throughput noninvasive phenotyping and rapid 3D imaging in small animals and developmental biology models is particularly compelling. Related technology advances hav...