Impact of enhanced resolution, speed and penetration on three-dimensional retinal optical coherence tomography

Recent substantial developments in light source and detector technology have initiated a paradigm shift in retinal optical coherence tomography (OCT) performance. Broad bandwidth light sources in the 800 nm and 1060 nm wavelength region enable axial OCT resolutions of 2-3 mu m and 5-7 mu m, respectively. Novel high speed silicon based CMOS cameras at 800 nm and InGaAs based CCD cameras in combination with frequency domain OCT technology enable data acquisition speeds of up to 47,000 A-scans/s at 1060 nm and up to 312,500 A-scans/s at 800 nm. Combining ultrahigh axial resolution, ultrahigh speed OCT at 800 nm with pancorrected adaptive optics allows volumetric in vivo cellular resolution retinal imaging. Commercially available three-dimensional (3D) retinal OCT at 800 nm ( 20,000 A-scans/s, 6 mu m axial resolution) is compared to ultrahigh speed 3D retinal imaging at 800 nm ( 160,000 A-scans/s, 2-3 mu m axial resolution), high speed 3D choroidal imaging at 1060 nm ( 47,000 Ascan/second, 6-7 mu m axial resolution) and cellular resolution retinal imaging at 800 nm using adaptive optics OCT at 160,000 A-scans/second with isotropic resolution of similar to 2 mu m. Analysis of the performance of these four imaging modalities applied in normal and pathologic eyes focusing on motion artifact free volumetric retinal imaging and revealing novel, complementary morphological information due to enhanced resolution, speed and penetration is presented. (C) 2009 Optical Society of America