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Real-time in vivo computed optical interferometric tomography

Nature Photonics volume 7, pages 444–448 (2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

High-resolution real-time tomography of scattering tissues is important for many areas of medicine and biology1,2,3,4,5,6. However, the compromise between transverse resolution and depth-of-field, in addition to low sensitivity deep in tissue, continues to impede progress towards cellular-level volumetric tomography. Computed imaging has the potential to solve these long-standing limitations. Interferometric synthetic aperture microscopy7,8,9 is a computed imaging technique enabling high-resolution volumetric tomography with spatially invariant resolution. However, its potential for clinical diagnostics remains largely untapped because full volume reconstructions required lengthy post-processing, and the phase-stability requirements have been difficult to satisfy in vivo. Here, we demonstrate how three-dimensional Fourier-domain resampling, in combination with high-speed optical coherence tomography, can achieve high-resolution in vivo tomography. Enhanced depth sensitivity was achieved over a depth of field extended in real time by more than an order of magnitude. This work lays the foundation for high-speed volumetric cellular-level tomography.

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Figure 1: Real-time in vivo ISAM of healthy human skin from the fingerprint region of the index finger.
Figure 2: Focus placement with real-time ISAM on ex vivo mouse muscle.
Figure 3: Real-time in vivo ISAM of skin from a healthy human wrist.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank E.J. Chaney (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) for providing the tissue samples used throughout this study, D.L. Marks (formerly at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) for providing the tissue phantom and D. Spillman (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) for administrative and information technology support related to this research. This research was supported in part by grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH; R01 EB012479 to S.A.B.) and an NIH Bioengineering Research Partnership (R01 EB013723 to S.A.B.). A.A. was funded in part by the NIH National Cancer Institute Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer (Midwest Cancer Nanotechnology Training Center; grant R25-CA154015A) and Texas Instruments.

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Author notes

  1. Adeel Ahmad and Nathan D. Shemonski: These authors contributed equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, 61801, Illinois, USA

    Adeel Ahmad, Nathan D. Shemonski, Steven G. Adie, P. Scott Carney & Stephen A. Boppart

  2. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1406 W. Green St, Urbana, 61801, Illinois, USA

    Adeel Ahmad, Nathan D. Shemonski, Steven G. Adie, Hee-Seok Kim, Wen-Mei W. Hwu, P. Scott Carney & Stephen A. Boppart

  3. Department of Bioengineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1304 W. Springfield Avenue, Urbana, 61801, Illinois, USA

    Stephen A. Boppart

  4. Department of Internal Medicine, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 506 S. Mathews Ave, Urbana, 61801, Illinois, USA

    Stephen A. Boppart

Authors
  1. Adeel Ahmad
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  7. Stephen A. Boppart
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Contributions

Experimental data were acquired by A.A., N.D.S. and S.G.A. Analysis and interpretation of data was carried out by A.A., N.D.S. and S.G.A. Additional processing and visualization was performed by A.A. and N.D.S. GPU code was written by A.A., N.D.S. and H.K., and reviewed by W.W.H. The manuscript was written and edited by all authors. S.A.B. and P.S.C. made seminal contributions to the core ideas carried out in this study, and obtained funding to support this research.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stephen A. Boppart.

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Competing interests

S.A.B. and P.S.C are co-founders of Diagnostic Photonics, Inc., which is licensing intellectual property from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign related to Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Microscopy. S.A.B. received patent royalties from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for technology related to optical coherence tomography. Other authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Ahmad, A., Shemonski, N., Adie, S. et al. Real-time in vivo computed optical interferometric tomography. Nature Photon 7, 444–448 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2013.71

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