Label-free cellular imaging of mouse retina with dual-mode full-field optical coherence tomography

High-resolution label-free dual-mode full-field optical coherence tomography (FFOCT) is developed for simultaneous structural and functional imaging of mouse retinas, achieving both static contrasts gained from structural refractive index gradients and dynamic contrasts induced by endogenous cell motility.Imaging experiments on normal mouse retinas show that static FFOCT images better reveal the relative stationary structures like nerve fibers, vascular walls, and collagens, and dynamic FFOCT images show enhanced contrasts of cells with active intracellular metabolic motions, offering complementary information about major retinal layers.Specifically, dual-mode FFOCT imaging on early ischaemia/reperfusion (I/R) injured mouse retinas highlights the transparent ganglion cells at the cellular level without contrast agent labeling, visualizing their structural and dynamic alterations in early I/R injured retina.