Vitreoretinal surgical visualization by ophthalmic microscopy is limited in its ability to distinguish thin translucent tissues from other retinal substructures. Conventional methods for supplementing poor contrast, such as with increased illumination and application of exogenous contrast agents, have been limited by the risks of toxicity at the retina. Spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SDOCT) has demonstrated strong clinical success in retinal imaging, enabling high-resolution, motion-artifact-free cross-sectional imaging and rapid accumulation of volumetric macular datasets. Current generation SDOCT systems achieve <5 μm axial resolutions in tissue, and have been used to obtain high resolution datasets from patients with neovascular AMD, high risk drusen, and geographic atrophy. Recently, an intraoperative microscope-mounted OCT system (MMOCT) was presented as a method of augmenting a surgical microscope to concurrently acquire high-resolution, high-contrast SDOCT volumetric datasets. Here, we demonstrated the utility of intraoperative MMOCT for the visualization of vitreoretinal surgical procedures. Vitreoretinal surgery was simulated by performing procedures, through an ophthalmic surgical microscope, on cadaveric porcine eyes. The datasets acquired with the MMOCT show both instrument-tissue interaction as well as the ability of OCT to image certain surgical tools, which would directly translate to better surgical visualization and impact the treatment of ocular diseases.

Date Published: 11 February 2011
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 7889, Optical Coherence Tomography and Coherence Domain Optical Methods in Biomedicine XV, 78890F (11 February 2011); doi: 10.1117/12.875236

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7889:
Optical Coherence Tomography and Coherence Domain Optical Methods in Biomedicine XV
James G. Fujimoto; Joseph A. Izatt; Valery V. Tuchin, Editor(s)