Ultrahigh-Speed Optical Coherence Tomography and its Applications in Biology and Medicine

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a powerful tool for assessing tissue architectural morphology. It enables three-dimensional (3D) imaging with micron-scale resolutions, and can be performed in vivo and in real-time without the need to remove and process specimens. OCT has gradually become the standard-of-care to non-invasively evaluate retinal pathology in ophthalmology clinics. Improving imaging speed has been a major driving force for OCT development. In this talk, recent technical advances to achieve ultrahigh imaging speed for OCT (e.g. space-division multiplexing OCT) will be presented. Furthermore, applications of OCT have started to grow in other clinical and scientific areas. Novel applications using OCT for cancer diagnosis in pathology laboratory, evaluation of 3D morphology of tumor spheroids, and investigation of heart development in Drosophila will also be discussed.