Wide-field sensorless adaptive optics swept-source optical coherence tomographic angiography in rodents

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Ophthalmology
• Medical Imaging

Background:

• Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography (OCTA) is crucial for visualizing microvasculature.
• Aberrations in imaging systems degrade image quality and resolution.
• Adaptive optics (AO) can correct aberrations, but often requires complex sensor systems.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and demonstrate a sensorless adaptive optics swept-source OCTA (sAO-SS-OCTA) imaging system for in vivo mouse imaging.
• To achieve high-resolution OCTA imaging with corrected aberrations and enhanced contrast.
• To enable rapid, high-quality microvasculature visualization in small animal models.

Main Methods:

• Implemented a real-time graphics processing unit (GPU)-based OCTA acquisition and processing software.
• Utilized signal strength index (SSI) from OCT and OCTA images for wavefront correction.
• Employed a deformable mirror for aberration correction guided by the SSI.
• Developed a sensorless adaptive optics approach to streamline the correction process.

Main Results:

• Successfully acquired high-resolution OCTA images with corrected aberrations.
• Demonstrated enhanced contrast in the corrected OCTA images.
• Achieved high-resolution, 50-degree field-of-view, montaged OCTA images.
• Validated the efficacy of the sensorless adaptive optics approach in mice.

Conclusions:

• The developed sAO-SS-OCTA system provides a robust platform for high-resolution microvasculature imaging in mice.
• Sensorless aberration correction significantly improves OCTA image quality without external sensors.
• This technology has potential applications in preclinical research and disease modeling.