Optical coherence tomography for cross-sectional imaging of neural activity

We report a functional optical coherence tomography cross-sectional scanner to detect neural activity using unmyelinated nerves dissected from squid. The nerves, unstained or stained with a voltage-sensitive dye, were imaged in a nerve chamber. Transient phase changes from backscattered light were detected during action potential propagation. The results show that the scanner can provide high spatiotemporal resolution cross-sectional images of neural activity (15 μs/A-line; 0.25 ms/B-scan; ∼8.5×5.5 μm2 in xz). The advantage of this method compared to monitoring a single depth profile z is a dramatic increase in the number of available sites that can be measured in two spatial dimensions xz with lateral scanning; therefore, the study demonstrates that two-dimensional monitoring of small-scale functional activity would also be feasible.