Nanosensitive optical coherence tomography to assess wound healing within the cornea

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that nanosensitive OCT (nsOCT) can detect nanoscale structural changes deep within the rat cornea after superficial injury, potentially enhancing diagnostic capabilities in ophthalmology.

Contribution

The study shows for the first time that nsOCT can identify nanoscale structural changes in the cornea at depths typical for conventional OCT, improving sensitivity over traditional methods.

Findings

nsOCT detects nanoscale changes in rat cornea post-injury

Enhanced sensitivity compared to traditional OCT

Potential for improved clinical diagnostics in ophthalmology

Abstract

Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is a non-invasive depth resolved optical imaging modality, that enables high resolution, cross-sectional imaging in biological tissues and materials at clinically relevant depths. Though OCT offers high resolution imaging, the best ultra-high-resolution OCT systems are limited to imaging structural changes with a resolution of one micron on a single B-scan within very limited depth. Nanosensitive OCT (nsOCT) is a recently developed technique that is capable of providing enhanced sensitivity of OCT to structural changes. Improving the sensitivity of OCT to detect structural changes at the nanoscale level, to a depth typical for conventional OCT, could potentially improve the diagnostic capability of OCT in medical applications. In this paper, we demonstrate the capability of nsOCT to detect structural changes deep in the rat cornea following superficial corneal injury.