Phase stable swept-source optical coherence tomography with active mode-locking laser for contrast enhancements of retinal angiography

Swept-source optical coherence tomography (SS-OCT) is an attractive high-speed imaging technique for retinal angiography. However, conventional swept lasers vary the cavity length of the laser mechanically to tune the output wavelength. This causes sweep-timing jitter and hence low phase stability i...

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Veröffentlicht in:Scientific reports 2021-08, Vol.11 (1), p.16636-16636, Article 16636
Hauptverfasser: Park, Kwan Seob, Park, Eunwoo, Lee, Hwidon, Lee, Hyun-Ji, Lee, Sang-Won, Eom, Tae Joong
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Sprache:eng
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Zusammenfassung:Swept-source optical coherence tomography (SS-OCT) is an attractive high-speed imaging technique for retinal angiography. However, conventional swept lasers vary the cavity length of the laser mechanically to tune the output wavelength. This causes sweep-timing jitter and hence low phase stability in OCT angiography. Here, we improve an earlier phase-stabilized, akinetic, SS-OCT angiography (OCTA) method by introducing coherent averaging. We develop an active mode-locking (AML) laser as a high phase-stable akinetic swept source for the OCTA system. The phase stability of the improved system was analyzed, and the effects of coherent averaging were validated using a retina phantom. The effectiveness of the coherent averaging method was further confirmed by comparing coherently and conventionally averaged en face images of human retinal vasculature for their contrast-to-noise ratio, signal-to-noise ratio, and vasculature connectivity. The contrast-to-noise ratio was approximately 1.3 times larger when applying the coherent averaging method in the human retinal experiment. Our coherent averaging method with the high phase-stability AML laser source for OCTA provides a valuable tool for studying healthy and diseased retinas.
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/s41598-021-95982-9