Supercontinuum parallel line-field optical coherence tomography for high sensitivity, kilohertz frame rate imaging

Emerging supercontinuum (SC) light sources suitable for optical coherence tomography (OCT) offer greater illumination power than conventional sources, and large optical bandwidths for ultrahigh-resolution imaging. Because there is a tradeoff between power and sensitivity, by distributing the power across a line for sample illumination, we can avoid perturbing cellular behavior while increasing imaging sensitivity. Here we demonstrate an SC-based, spectraldomain, parallel line-field OCT system, and show that it exhibits an unprecedented combination of resolution, speed, and sensitivity for capturing cellular dynamics. We employ the system for imaging of human bronchial epithelial cells in vitro which exhibit rapid ciliary motion that is highly spatially localized