Optical coherence-gated imaging of biological tissues

We present optical coherence-gated tomography (OCT) in turbid biological tissues. The fast OCT system that is used in this study is a single-mode fiber-optic interferometer with low-coherence light at 830 nm which can perform a cross-sectional image of 250-600 pixels in a few seconds. Preliminary results suggest that OCT can provide high-resolution imaging in low-scattering and high-scattering superficial tissues. In vitro imaging of porcine cornea after being coagulated with a laser shows that OCT is a promising tool for the evaluation of pathological structures in low-scattering tissue. This technique can also be used to diagnose disease in high-scattering tissues like bladder and living skin. In addition, 50 MHz ultrasound images and histological pictures are presented for comparison with OCT.