Comprehensive in vivo micro-vascular imaging of the human eye by dual-beam-scan Doppler optical coherence angiography

• Published in: Optics express Vol. 19; no. 2; p. 1271
• Main Authors: Makita, Shuichi, Franck, Jaillon, Yamanari, Masahiro, Miura, Masahiro, Yasuno, Yoshiaki
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States 17.01.2011
• Subjects: Angiography - methods; Equipment Design; Equipment Failure Analysis; Humans; Image Enhancement - instrumentation; Image Enhancement - methods; Microvessels - cytology; Retinal Vessels - anatomy & histology; Retinoscopes; Tomography, Optical Coherence - instrumentation; Tomography, Optical Coherence - methods
• ISSN: 1094-4087; 1094-4087
• DOI: 10.1364/OE.19.001271

Comprehensive angiography provides insight into the diagnosis of vascular-related diseases. However, complex microvascular networks of unstable in vivo organs such as the eye require micron-scale resolution in three dimensions and a high sampling rate to access a wide area as maintaining the high resolution. Here, we introduce dual-beam-scan Doppler optical coherence angiography (OCA) as a label-free comprehensive ophthalmic angiography that satisfies theses requirements. In addition to high resolution and high imaging speed, high sensitivity to motion for detecting tiny blood flow of microvessels is achieved by detecting two time-delayed signals with scanning of two probing beams separated on a sample. We present in vivo three-dimensional imaging of the microvasculature of the posterior part of the human eye. The demonstrated results show that this technique may be used for comprehensive ophthalmic angiography to evaluate the vasculature of the posterior human eye and to diagnose variety of vascular diseases.