The prospect of visible light optical coherence tomography (VIS-OCT) has been capturing the imagination of the optical imaging community for years. This is because OCT imaging in the visible spectral band should offer several advantages, including lateral and axial resolution improvements as well as high absorption sensitivity for spectral or multi-color OCT, over standard infrared imaging bands centered at 850 nm, 1050 nm, 1.3 μm, or 1.55 μm. Despite these potential advantages, progress in the development and application of VIS-OCT remained relatively limited. The latest paper by Kho and Srinivasan suggests that spatially dependent dispersion might be partially blamed for problems in achieving the full potential of VIS-OCT. In their latest work published in Optics Letters, the authors demonstrate that the large dispersion of optical glass, as well as of the sample itself, could compromise all major advantages of VIS-OCT (resolution and spectral sensitivity to absorption). To rectify this, the authors developed a framework to compensate for spatially dependent (i.e., depth- and transverse-position-dependent) dispersion. This method was used to compensate spatially dependent dispersion in mouse retinal images acquired in vivo, allowing clean delineation of fine outer retinal bands, unleashing—perhaps for the first time—the full potential of VIS-OCT.

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