Automatic scanning of large tissue areas in neurosurgery using optical coherence tomography

Background With its high spatial and temporal resolution, optical coherence tomography (OCT) is an ideal modality for intra-operative imaging. One possible application is to detect tumour invaded tissue in neurosurgery, e.g. during complete resection of glioblastoma. Ideally, the whole resection cavity is scanned. However, OCT is limited to a small field of view (FOV) and scanning perpendicular to the tissue surface. Methods We present a new method to use OCT for scanning of the resection cavity during neurosurgical resection of brain tumours. The main challenges are creating a map of the cavity, scanning perpendicular to the surface and merging the three-dimensional (3D) data for intra-ope…