Swept-source optical coherence tomography imaging of the Guinea pig cochlea

OCT is an imaging modality that can be illustrated as the optical analog to ultrasound, where focused light illuminates a sample and backscattered light is collected under use of mterferometry. On the other hand, the inner ear is a small and sophisticated organ, mainly comprising the vestibular system and cochlea. In this study, we leverage the technology of swept-source optical coherence tomography to obtain the ex vivo volumetric image of the Guinea pig cochlea allowing a better understanding of the cochlear architectures, serving an important step for the subsequent in vivo applications. Moreover, two different center wavelength light sources, i.e. 1.06 urn and 1.3 urn, were used to develop two separate OCT systems, enabling a more detailed investigation on the tissue architectures of the Guinea pig cochlea at different regimes as well as different imaging resolutions.