Aberration-free volumetric high-speed imaging of in vivo retina

Abstract

Research and medicine rely on non-invasive optical techniques to image living tissue with high resolution in space and time. But so far a single data acquisition could not provide entirely diffraction-limited tomographic volumes of rapidly moving or changing targets, which additionally becomes increasingly difficult in the presence of aberrations, e.g., when imaging retina in vivo. We show, that a simple interferometric setup based on parallelized optical coherence tomography acquires volumetric data with 10 billion voxels per second, exceeding previous imaging speeds by an order of magnitude. This allows us to computationally obtain and correct defocus and aberrations resulting in entirely diffraction-limited volumes. As demonstration, we imaged living human retina with clearly visible nerve fiber layer, small capillary networks, and photoreceptor cells, but the technique is also applicable to obtain phase-sensitive volumes of other scattering structures at unprecedented acquisition speeds.