Posters

Corneal nerves in micro optical coherence tomography

Poster Details

First Author: C.Elhardt USA

Co Author(s):    C. Wertheimer   H. Leung   G. Sharma   K. Singh   R. Birngruber   G. Tearney     

Abstract Details

Purpose:

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a standard, non-contact method for clinical evaluation of the cornea with a resolution of approximately 10µm. In this study, we tested the capability of an advanced, 1µm-resolution form of OCT termed micro OCT (µOCT) prototype to visualize corneal nerves in three dimensions.

Setting:

Wellman Center for Photomedicine, Harvard Medical School

Methods:

Three-dimensional images, spanning 1x1x0.429mm of 10 excised rabbit corneas, were acquired with a bench top µOCT system. The lateral resolution of the system was 2µm over a depth of focus of 300µm and the axial resolution was 1µm in air. The three-dimensional image acquisition time was 13sec. The three-dimensional images were analyzed with a Neurite Tracer to delineate nerves, depicting them as three-dimensional skeletons. Subsequently corneal nerves were stained with fluorescent immunohistochemistry using a tubulin-ß3 antibody. Stained specimens were then digitized using a digital fluorescence confocal microscope and compared to µOCT.

Results:

µOCT images showed white lines in the stroma with several, highly reflecting, branched structures running through the different corneal layers and keratocytes. The density and three-dimensional morphology of these highly reflecting branched structures was qualitatively similar to that of nerves seen by immunohistochemistry.

Conclusions:

This study provides evidence that µOCT is capable of enabling the visualization of three-dimensional corneal nerves networks. These findings suggest that µOCT could become a helpful tool to detect corneal nerves and study the relationship between systemic diseases and corneal nerve density and morphology. These results, along with the rapid imaging and non-contact features of this technology merit the further investigation of this technique as a potential alternative to confocal microscopy for corneal nerve assessment.

Financial Disclosure:

None