Center for Biomedical OCT Research and Translation

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Project Summary Overall The Center for Biomedical OCT Research and Translation seeks to push the technological frontier of optical coherence tomography instrumentation and methods in response to challenges in biology and medicine. Fundamental to our approach, CBORT thrives on an intimate, push-pull relationship between physicists/engineers and biological, pre-clinical and clinical scientists. The most direct impact of the NCBIB will be to develop and provide broad access to powerful new tools for biological and clinical research. Facilitating rapid, high-resolution, high-contrast imaging through tailored, application-specific instruments will accelerate and open new avenues of biomedical research. Results of this effort may include, for example, the identification of new methods for diagnosis, new insights into disease or disease progression, or the formulation of new therapeutic strategies or drug targets. Further, the resulting biological and clinical research will identify new opportunities for commercialization of technology. By developing and making innovative and effective OCT technology available, we anticipate that there will be rapid progress and significant advances in each of these areas. Training and dissemination of OCT instruments and methods is another priority of CBORT. Regular symposia and workshops foster a broader communication within the field, provide access to results of research, and offer a hand-on experience with the construction, operation, and interpretation of data from state-of-the-art imaging systems. External users additionally have access to imaging systems within the Center to conduct focused experiments or to generate preliminary data. CBORT can also place imaging systems off-site for clinical or pre-clinical pilot studies. The Specific Aims of the TRD projects include the development of three-dimensional, high resolution retinal polarimetry and angiography, the development of a novel surgical guidance imaging system based on circular ranging OCT, and the development of polarimetry with optic axis mapping through narrow gauge needle probes. Our proposed research is significant to medicine in that it will provide new tools for the diagnosis of vascular and retinal diseases, new methods for precise, guided surgery, and a unique capability for quantitative polarimetry. Individual TRD projects contribute to the overall theme and goals of the program by pursuing the fundamental building blocks of OCT instrumentation, technology and methods. The TRD projects are highly synergistic in their cross-pollination of ideas and approaches and their mutual dependence on advances in fiberoptics, novel lasers, and unique signal and image processing techniques. Additionally, there is a strong component of artificial intelligence and machine learning underpinning each TRD.