Optical Coherence Tomography Based Angiography is now lifting the OCT applications to a new height since it can noninvasively provide functional information about the dynamics of blood vessel networks, which is otherwise difficult to obtain by the use of the traditional OCT for which the contrast mechanism is based on light backscattering. This functional information is likely to provide insights that can improve our understanding of the pathophysiology of various disease conditions that have vascular involvement. In ophthalmology, for example, diabetic retinopathy (DR) often involves retinal capillary complications and sometimes neovascularization.

    Without a need for exogenous contrasting agent, the recent OCT-based angiography has indicated its great advantage over the current clinical standard imaging techniques for visualizing functional retinal blood vessels, such as fluorescein angiography (FA) and indocyanine green angiography.

 

张芹芹 PhD

Senior research fellow

Department of Bioengineering

University of Washington