Systems and methods are provided for tracking a depth of a surgical instrument in an optical coherence tomography (OCT) guided surgical procedure. An OCT device is configured to image a region of interest to provide OCT data. A scan processor is configured to determine a relative position of the instrument and a target within the region of interest from at least the OCT data, where the instrument is one of in front of the target, within the target, or below the target. A feedback element is configured to communicate the relative position of the instrument and the target to a user in a human comprehensible form.
