Optical coherence tomography based angiography [Invited]

• Published in: Biomedical optics express 2017-02, Vol.8 (2), p.1056-1082
• Main Authors: Chen, Chieh-Li, Wang, Ruikang K
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 2156-7085; 2156-7085
• DOI: 10.1364/boe.8.001056

Optical coherence tomography (OCT)-based angiography (OCTA) provides , three-dimensional vascular information by the use of flowing red blood cells as intrinsic contrast agents, enabling the visualization of functional vessel networks within microcirculatory tissue beds non-invasively, without a need of dye injection. Because of these attributes, OCTA has been rapidly translated to clinical ophthalmology within a short period of time in the development. Various OCTA algorithms have been developed to detect the functional micro-vasculatures by utilizing different components of OCT signals, including phase-signal-based OCTA, intensity-signal-based OCTA and complex-signal-based OCTA. All these algorithms have shown, in one way or another, their clinical values in revealing micro-vasculatures in biological tissues , identifying abnormal vascular networks or vessel impairment zones in retinal and skin pathologies, detecting vessel patterns and angiogenesis in eyes with age-related macular degeneration and in skin and brain with tumors, and monitoring responses to hypoxia in the brain tissue. The purpose of this paper is to provide a technical oriented overview of the OCTA developments and their potential pre-clinical and clinical applications, and to shed some lights on its future perspectives. Because of its clinical translation to ophthalmology, this review intentionally places a slightly more weight on ophthalmic OCT angiography.