Ultra highspeed in-vivo Fourier domain full-field OCT of the human retina

In-vivo full field (FF) optical coherence tomography (OCT) images of human retina with up to 6.8 million A-lines/s are presented by using a rapidly tunable laser source in combination with an ultra-high speed CMOS camera. It is shown that Fourier domain (FD) full field OCT could provide a way to overcome limitations in imaging speed which are posed by the maximal possible exposure (MPE) of the retina. With a 100~Hz sweep rate FF-OCT was fast enough to acquire OCT images without motion artifacts, but with rather low sensitivity of 77 dB limited by an undesired incoherent background. Nevertheless, FF-OCT may become an attractive alternative for ultrafast retinal imaging boosting image speed by a lack of moving parts and the use of considerably higher irradiation power, if it is possible to to increase the sensitivity by reducing incoherent straylight.