Retinal light-evoked hemodynamic response with circular OCTA

Optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) provides high-contrast imaging of retinal vasculature but mainly offers anatomical rather than functional imaging. Functional imaging is essential for assessing tissue functionality, yet visualizing and quantifying light-evoked hemodynamic response in the human retina with OCTA is challenging due to motion artifacts like eye movement, blinking, and cardiac pulsatility. This work introduces a functional OCT prototype using off-the-shelf optics and a new OCTA processing method to visualize and quantify retinal hemodynamic response. Our approach statistically mitigates motion artifacts and noise, yielding more accurate results. Cross-sectional OCTA images show increased perfusion in response to light stimuli. Data from six healthy subjects indicate a consistent flow index increase (21.81±19.99%) during green light stimulation. This technique holds promise for early functional assessment of retinal circulatory impairments in degenerative diseases.