A Novel scalable approach using Terahertz (THz) waves together with the electromagnetic field simulation was applied to investigate four rabbits of eight rabbit corneas in vivo. One eye of each rabbits' corneas was edema induced; the other eye of the corneas served as the control. The simulation revealed the propagation of THz waves at a certain distance along the sub-surface of the cornea. THz spectra have been collected close to the corneal surface by deviating the direct reflection of the THz beam for the edema cornea, the reflected wave intensity for edema corneas is generally larger compared with the control cornea. Upon edema becomes severe at the end of the observation, the reflected wave intensities obtained by detector corresponding to the corneal deep stroma layer approach to the same value for all observed corneas. Good correlation is observed between central corneal thickness measurements and THz wave reflection signal intensities. Our results demonstrated that THz spectroscopy technique could obtain the information from different corneal sublayers.
Keywords: cornea; hydration level; in vivo sensing; terahertz.
© 2021 The Authors. Journal of Biophotonics published by Wiley-VCH GmbH.