Spatially or temporally resolved phase-based optoretinography with actively-tracked point-scanning optical coherence tomography

Optoretinography is a promising approach to measure visual function but its clinical translation has remained confined to research settings due to demanding hardware requirements. Here, we demonstrate that high-quality phase-based optoretinography can be performed using conventional point-scanning spectral-domain optical coherence tomography. We show that the need for high imaging speed can be circumvented by accurate sampling of phase changes at consistent spatial location. Light-evoked outer-segment expansion could be temporally resolved in B-scan series acquired at a fixed position when filtering off-location B-scans, and spatially resolved in volumes acquired at rates as low as 1~Hz. These results indicate that the technical barrier for phase-based optoretinography is substantially lower than previously assumed and pave the way toward broad clinical translation.