Noncontact heartbeat OCE in vivo: using ultra-fast OCT to measure corneal stiffness

The biomechanical properties of the cornea can provide important information for assessing ocular health. Optical coherence elastography (OCE) is a pre-clinical technique for imaging the biomechanical properties of tissues. Typically, OCE involves inducing a force upon a tissue using an active excitation source and imaging the tissue response to that force using optical coherence tomography (OCT). In this study, we demonstrate the first use of in vivo, noncontact, heartbeat OCE (Hb-OCE), a passive imaging technique for assessing the biomechanical properties of the cornea in a rabbit and in a human subject. Future work will focus on live biomechanical mapping of the cornea.