Assessment of lamb wave dispersion in cornea using shear wave imaging optical coherence tomography (SWI-OCT)

The characteristics of lamb wave propagation in cornea can be of great importance for the quantitative measurement of corneal viscoelasticity. Here, we report the use of shear wave imaging optical coherence tomography (SWI-OCT) to assess the dispersion of lamb wave propagation in an ex vivo rabbit cornea. The temporal displacement profile of lamb wave propagation is obtained with SWI-OCT. From the spectral analysis on the corneal lamb wave, the phase information of the wave propagation can be extracted, which is used to quantify the phase velocity at different frequencies. The dependence of the phase on the propagation distance is presented with 2-D depth-resolved mapping at typical frequency components with micro-scale spatial resolution. Results indicate that the obtained lamb wave dispersion curve agrees well with the analytical approximation and demonstrate the feasibility of using SWI-OCT to study the dispersion of lamb wave propagation in cornea.