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9 December 2024 Optical clearing with tartrazine enables deep transscleral imaging with optical coherence tomography
Amit Narawane, Robert Trout, Christian Viehland, Anthony N. Kuo, Lejla Vajzovic, Al-Hafeez Dhalla, Cynthia A. Toth
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Journal of Biomedical Optics, Vol. 29, Issue 12, 120501 (December 2024). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JBO.29.12.120501
Abstract

Significance

Imaging deep structures with optical coherence tomography (OCT) is difficult in highly scattering biological tissue, such as the sclera. There is a need to visualize the suprachoroidal space and choroid through the sclera to study suprachoroidal drug delivery.

Aim

We aim to develop optical methods to image through the highly scattering sclera with a custom-built OCT system to visualize the suprachoroidal space and drug delivery within.

Approach

We developed a custom handheld OCT scanner to image the anterior segment and suprachoroidal space in ex vivo eye models. Tartrazine (Yellow 5) solution, which has been shown to optically clear biological tissue in the visible regime, was tested as a clearing agent to optimize near infrared OCT imaging through the sclera.

Results

Tartrazine dramatically increased OCT signal return from the deeper sclera and choroid and thus enabled visualization of the suprachoroidal drug delivery after transscleral injection.

Conclusions

We demonstrated successful optical clearing of the thick, porcine sclera with a compact handheld OCT system to image the suprachoroidal space. We believe there is broader potential to use optical clearing with handheld OCT for a variety of previously inaccessible, highly scattering tissue samples.
CC BY: © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.
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Amit Narawane, Robert Trout, Christian Viehland, Anthony N. Kuo, Lejla Vajzovic, Al-Hafeez Dhalla, and Cynthia A. Toth "Optical clearing with tartrazine enables deep transscleral imaging with optical coherence tomography," Journal of Biomedical Optics 29(12), 120501 (9 December 2024). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JBO.29.12.120501
Received: 12 November 2024; Accepted: 18 November 2024; Published: 9 December 2024
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KEYWORDS
Optical coherence tomography
Optical clearing
Tissues
Sclera
Visualization
Biomedical optics
Eye
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