High-resolution retinal swept source optical coherence tomography with an ultra-wideband Fourier-domain mode-locked laser at MHz A-scan rates

Abstract

We present a new 1060 nm Fourier domain mode locked laser (FDML laser) with a record 143 nm sweep bandwidth at 2∙ 417 kHz = 834 kHz and 120 nm at 1.67 MHz, respectively. We show that not only the bandwidth alone, but also the shape of the spectrum is critical for the resulting axial resolution, because of the specific wavelength-dependent absorption of the vitreous. The theoretical limit of our setup lies at 5.9 µm axial resolution. In vivo MHz-OCT imaging of human retina is performed and the image quality is compared to the previous results acquired with 70 nm sweep range, as well as to existing spectral domain OCT data with 2.1 µm axial resolution from literature. We identify benefits of the higher resolution, for example the improved visualization of small blood vessels in the retina besides several others.