White Paper: Non-Invasive Biomedical Imaging With FD-OCT

Current medical practice poses a constant demand for development of non-contact, minimally invasive imaging techniques that can be used in clinics and hospitals for early diagnostics of various diseases and as an alternative to standard excisional biopsy. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a relatively novel imaging method that allows for non-invasive, cross-sectional imaging of the biological tissue structure with cellular level resolution and at depths of up to 1.5–2 mm below the surface. In addition, OCT can provide useful information about physiological processes in biological tissue by probing the birefringence properties, the rate of blood flow and the blood oxygen and/or glucose concentration levels in the imaged sample. In the past 10 years OCT has emerged as a viable imaging technique with great potential for clinical applications in ophthalmology, dermatology, cardiology and more.