Functional Imaging of Retinal Neurons: Phase-Sensitive Optical Coherence Tomography

In this book, a functional contrast of the human neurons in the retina based on the phase information of the optical coherence tomography (OCT) signal is presented. To gain access to the phase information, data is recorded with a full-field swept-source OCT. By axial and lateral parallelization of the data acquisition, the influence of motion artifacts on the phase can be minimized, so that the phase information is available for an analysis of the physiological changes of the sample.In this book, the technical implementation of full-field imaging, the algorithms necessary for the phase analysis, such as registration, segmentation, numerical aberration and dispersion correction, and the phase analysis itself are presented. This recording technology, combined with the numerical processing, was then used to detect functional changes in the neurons of the retina. Functional changes in both the photoreceptors and the inner plexiform layer (IPL) were detected and the functional contributions of different cell types to the phase change were differentiated.