Imaging Motion: A Comprehensive Review of Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography

Adv Exp Med Biol. 2021:1310:343-365. doi: 10.1007/978-981-33-6064-8_12.

Abstract

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a three-dimensional (3-D) optical imaging technology that provides noninvasive, micrometer resolution images of structural interiors within biological samples with an approximately 1 ~ 2 mm penetration depth. Over the last decades, advances in OCT have revolutionized biomedical imaging by demonstrating a potential of optical biopsy in preclinical and clinical settings. Recently, functional OCT imaging has shown a promise as angiography to visualize cell-perfused vasculatures in the tissue bed in vivo without requiring any exogenous contrast agents. This new technology termed OCT angiography (OCTA) possesses a unique imaging capability of delineating tissue morphology and blood or lymphatic vessels down to capillaries at real-time acquisition rates. For the past 10 years since 2007, OCTA has been proven to be a useful tool to identify disorder or dysfunction in tissue microcirculation from both experimental animal studies and clinical studies in ophthalmology and dermatology. In this section, we overview about OCTA including a basic principle of OCTA explained with simple optical physics, and its scan protocols and post-processing algorithms for acquisition of angiography. Then, potential and challenge of OCTA for clinical settings are shown with outcomes of human studies.

Keywords: Label-free angiography; Motion-contrast imaging; Optical coherence tomography; Red blood cells.

Publication types

  • Review

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Capillaries*
  • Contrast Media
  • Fluorescein Angiography
  • Humans
  • Optical Imaging
  • Tomography, Optical Coherence*

Substances

  • Contrast Media