Field-Deployable Imaging System to Assess Potential Retinal Injuries

Advanced imaging technologies now exist to detect tissue changes that occur due to retinal laser injuries not discernable with fundus photography. Recent developments at Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) and the Wellman Laboratories of Photomedicine (MGH/Harvard) have made it possible to combine new technologies into a single, affordable field-deployable device. PSI’s Line-Scanning Laser Ophthalmoscope (LSLO) is a compact, low-cost, quasi-confocal SLO imaging system. High quality, high resolution and high contrast wide-field en face retinal LSLO images are obtained non-mydriatically with <600 microwatt of NIR power at 30 frames/sec or more. Revolutionary advances have been made in the field of optical coherence tomography (OCT), pioneered by researchers at MGH. New implementations of spectral domain OCT (SDOCT) have produced more efficient designs with few moving parts and a thousand-fold multiplex advantage over conventional time-domain OCT. Full SDOCT images are obtained non-mydriatically, with <600 microwatt of broadband illumination at ~30 frames/sec or more. The architecture PSI developed for the hand-held LSLO is ideally suited to the incorporation of SDOCT. In Phase I, a hybrid LSLO/SDOCT imaging system was successfully demonstrated. A powerful new class of hand-held hybrid devices will be developed in Phase II that switch imaging modes at the touch of a button.