Visualizing features with wide-field volumetric OCT angiography

• Published in: Optics express 2024-03, Vol.32 (6), p.10329-10347
• Main Authors: Hormel, Tristan T, Liang, Guangru B, Wei, Xiang, Guo, Yukun, Gao, Min, Wang, Jie, Huang, David, Bailey, Steven T, Hwang, Thomas S, Jia, Yali
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Diabetic Retinopathy; Fluorescein Angiography; Humans; Retina; Retinal Vessels - pathology; Tomography, Optical Coherence - methods
• ISSN: 1094-4087; 1094-4087
• DOI: 10.1364/OE.510640

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) and its extension OCT angiography (OCTA) have become essential clinical imaging modalities due to their ability to provide depth-resolved angiographic and tissue structural information non-invasively and at high resolution. Within a field of view, the anatomic detail available is sufficient to identify several structural and vascular pathologies that are clinically relevant for multiple prevalent blinding diseases, including age-related macular degeneration (AMD), diabetic retinopathy (DR), and vein occlusions. The main limitation in contemporary OCT devices is that this field of view is limited due to a fundamental trade-off between system resolution/sensitivity, sampling density, and imaging window dimensions. Here, we describe a swept-source OCT device that can capture up to a 12 × 23-mm field of view in a single shot and show that it can identify conventional pathologic features such as non-perfusion areas outside of conventional fields of view. We also show that our approach maintains sensitivity sufficient to visualize novel features, including choriocapillaris morphology beneath the macula and macrophage-like cells at the inner limiting membrane, both of which may have implications for disease.