Clinical applications of doppler OCT and OCT angiography

Doppler optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a functional extension of OCT that allows for the visualization and measurement of blood flow [1, 2]. Phase-resolved Doppler OCT has become a standard algorithm for measuring Doppler shift with Fourier–domain (FD)–OCT because of its high velocity sensitivity [3]. In ophthalmology, several methods have been developed to measure in vivo retinal blood flow using this algorithm. Since Doppler OCT measures only the velocity component parallel to the OCT probe beam, additional information is needed to calculate absolute velocity and volumetric flow rate. One method is to employ two OCT beams with a fixed offset in incidence angles [4, 5]. However, this approach requires special hardware and is not compatible with commercial single–beam OCT systems. Another approach is to use special scan patterns to measure the Doppler angle (angle between the OCT beam and the blood vessel). Some groups used concentric scan patterns [6, 7], while other groups used raster scan patterns [8, 9]. Finally, Srinivasan et al. developed en face Doppler OCT for cerebral blood flow calculation, which obviated the need for Doppler angle estimation [10]. Bauman et al. adapted the method for total retinal blood flow (TRBF) calculation with ultrafast swept–source OCT [11]. In this chapter, we focus our attention on the double–circular scan pattern developed in our research group, which has been used in a number of clinical studies for preliminary demonstration of utility.