The en face operating stereomicroscope offers limited depth perception and ophthalmic surgeons must often rely on stereopsis and instrument shadowing to estimate motion in the axial dimension. Recent research and commercial microscope-integrated optical coherence tomography (MIOCT) systems have allowed OCT of live surgery, but these were restricted to real-time cross-sectional (B-scan) imaging which captures limited information about maneuvers that extend over 3D space. We recently reported on a four dimensional (4D: 3D imaging over time) MIOCT and HUD system with real-time volumetric rendering for human ophthalmic surgery, but this 100 kHz OCT system was restricted to 3.3 volumes/sec to achieve sufficient lateral sampling over a 5x5 mm field of view (FOV). In this work, we present a high-speed 4D MIOCT (HS 4D MIOCT) system for volumetric imaging at 800 kHz A-scan rate. The proposed system employs a temporal spectral splitting (TSS) technique in which the spectrum of a buffered 400 kHz OCT system is windowed into sub-spectra to yield A-scans with reduced axial resolution but at a doubled A-scan rate of 800 kHz. The trade-offs of TSS for B-scan and volumetric retinal imaging were characterized in healthy adult volunteers. In addition, porcine eye surgical manipulations were imaged with HS 4D MIOCT imaging at 10.85 volumes/sec with 400x96x340 (X,Y,Z) usable voxels over a 5x5 mm lateral FOV. HS 4D MIOCT was capable of imaging subtle volumetric tissue manipulations with high temporal and spatial resolution using ANSI-limited optical power and is readily translatable to the human operating suite.
|