We present a novel optical coherence tomography (OCT) system design that employs coherence revival-based heterodyning and polarization encoding to simultaneously image the ocular anterior segment and the retina. Coherence revival heterodyning allows for multiple depths within a sample to be simultaneously imaged and frequency encoded by carefully controlling the optical pathlength of each sample path. A polarization-encoded sample arm was used to direct orthogonal polarizations to the anterior segment and retina. This design is a significant step toward realizing whole-eye OCT, which would enable customized ray-traced modeling of patient eyes to improve refractive surgical interventions, as well as the elimination of optical artifacts in retinal OCT diagnostics. We demonstrated the feasibility of this system by acquiring images of the anterior segments and retinas of healthy human volunteers.

Date Published: 1 February 2012
PDF: 4 pages
Proc. SPIE 8213, Optical Coherence Tomography and Coherence Domain Optical Methods in Biomedicine XVI, 82131G (1 February 2012); doi: 10.1117/12.911306

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8213:
Optical Coherence Tomography and Coherence Domain Optical Methods in Biomedicine XVI
Joseph A. Izatt; James G. Fujimoto; Valery V. Tuchin, Editor(s)