This Phase I Small Business Innovative Research application proposes to significantly advance optical coherence tomography (OCT) technology for imaging and detection of retinal pathologies by developing a novel swept source OCT (SS-OCT) system, which exhibits considerable improvements over the current state of the art. SS-OCT has recently been demonstrated to have significant advantages in sensitivity and robustness compared to conventional time-domain OCT (TD-OCT) systems, however the development of this technology has been severely hampered by a lack of suitable swept 1aser sources. Working with a novel s wept s ource 1aser design developed b y our subcontractor, our consultants have demonstrated the superior performance of SS-OCT over TD-OCT in the 1.3 micron wavelength region commonly used for non-ophthalmic imaging, and now we propose to develop a similar system in the 800 nm region for retinal imaging. If successful, this system will have superior resolution compared to commercially available retinal OCT scanners (<5 micron FWHM axial resolution in the retina), as well as significantly greater SNR, which will enable imaging through opaque media and real-time retinal imaging for the first time. Real-time retinal imaging has significant potential clinical applications including improved retinal layer mapping (e.g. retinal nerve fiber layer, ganglion cell layer), three-dimensional retinal image acquisition, and real-time intrasurgical guidance. Our team of investigators, subcontractors, and consultants includes experts in optoelectronic component manufacturing (the basis of OCT technology), optical sensing, and one of the original developers of OCT systems for retinal and anterior segment imaging.
