Abstract
Most reported photoacoustic ocular imaging work to date uses small animals, such as mice and rats, the eyes of which are small and less than one-third the size of a human eye, which poses a challenge for clinical translation. Here we achieved chorioretinal imaging of larger animals, i.e. rabbits, using a dual-modality photoacoustic microscopy (PAM) and optical coherence tomography (OCT) system. Preliminary experimental results in living rabbits demonstrate that the PAM can noninvasively visualize depth-resolved retinal and choroidal vessels using a safe laser exposure dose; and the OCT can finely distinguish different retinal layers, the choroid, and the sclera. This reported work might be a major step forward in clinical translation of photoacoustic microscopy.