Cornea microstructure and mechanical responses measured with nonlinear optical and optical coherence microscopy using sub-10-fs pulses

A combined nonlinear optical microscopy (NLOM) and optical coherence microscopy (OCM) imaging system has been assembled in order to simultaneously capture co-registered volumetric images of corneal morphology and biochemistry. Tracking of cell nuclei visible in the OCM volume enabled the calculation of strain depth profile in response to changes in intraocular pressure for rabbit cornea stroma. Results revealed nonlinear responses with a depth dependent strain distribution, exhibiting smaller strains in the anterior and larger strains in the posterior stroma. Cross-sectional images of collagen lamellae, visible in NLOM, showed inhomogeneous collagen structure along the anterior-posterior direction that correlated well with the noted heterogeneous corneal mechanical responses.