Imaging of retinal ganglion cells and photoreceptors using Spatio-Temporal Optical Coherence Tomography (STOC-T) without hardware-based adaptive optics

Abstract

We demonstrate an experimental Spatio-Temporal Optical Coherence Tomography (STOC-T) system featuring optimized illumination and an increased lateral resolution of approximately 3  µm. The integration of high-speed phase randomization with a numerical averaging process facilitates a noticeable improvement in the signal-to-noise ratio. The effectiveness of this enhancement is demonstrated through volumetric imaging of a scattering object, and it enables in vivo imaging of the human retina at the cellular level. Additionally, the experiment is supported by computational aberration-correction techniques to achieve high-resolution in vivo imaging of the human retina. The visualization of retinal cone mosaics, and ganglion cell somas was achieved through contrast enhancement during the averaging process.