Collaborative effects of wavefront shaping and optical clearing agent in optical coherence tomography

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that combining optical clearing agents with wavefront shaping significantly improves the penetration depth and image quality in optical coherence tomography, enabling visualization of structures previously inaccessible.

Contribution

It introduces a novel combined approach of using OCAs and wavefront shaping in OCT to enhance imaging depth and quality, validated through phantom and ex vivo tissue studies.

Findings

Enhanced penetration depth and signal-to-noise ratio in OCT.

Successful imaging of hidden structures in mouse ears.

Concurrent application of OCA and wavefront shaping is effective.

Abstract

We demonstrate that simultaneous application of optical clearing agents (OCAs) and complex wavefront shaping in optical coherence tomography (OCT) can provide significant enhancement of the penetration depth and imaging quality. OCA reduces optical inhomogeneity of a highly scattering sample, and the wavefront shaping of illumination light controls multiple scattering, resulting in an enhancement of the penetration depth and signal-to-noise ratio. A tissue phantom study shows that concurrent applications of OCA and wavefront shaping successfully operate in OCT imaging. The penetration depth enhancement is further demonstrated for ex vivo mouse ears, revealing hidden structures inaccessible with conventional OCT imaging.