UC Davis

Ultra-high-resolution (UHR) optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging technique is using adaptive optics, to perform better better treatment and monitoring of retinal diseases. Researchers have developed a new generation of adaptive optics (AO) UHR OCT (AO-UHR-OCT) instrument that combines an ultrabroadband spectral light source and an achromatizing element, to increase measured axial resolution to around 3.5 μm. The measured axial resolution is increased without reducing lateral resolution and image quality. The new instrument uses an AO system in the spectral/Fourier domain OCT sample arm, to facilitate correction of a patient's ocular aberrations. The detection channel of the OCT spectrometer acquires spectral fringes of light, back-scattered from the retina, along with light from the reference arm.