Field-Deployable Imaging System to Assess Potential Retinal Injuries

Advanced imaging technologies now exist to detect the tissue changes that occur due to retinal laser injuries that may not be visible with fundus photography. Very recent developments at Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) and the Wellman Center for Photomedicine have made it possible to combine these technologies into a single, affordable field-deployable device. The 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 SLO images are obtained non-mydriatically with <600ƒYW of NIR source power at up to 30 frames/sec. Images are captured, processed and displayed with integrated FPGA and LCD technology. Simultaneously, revolutionary advances have been made in the field of optical coherence tomography (OCT), pioneered by researchers at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine. New implementations of spectral domain OCT (SD-OCT) have produced more efficient and compact OCT designs with few moving parts and a thousand-fold multiplex advantage over conventional OCT. Full SD-OCT images are obtained non-mydriatically, with <600ƒYW of broadband illumination at up to 30 frames/sec. The architecture that PSI has already developed for hand-held LSLO applications, is ideally suited to the incorporation of SD-OCT. In Phase I, a hybrid LSLO/SD-OCT system will be demonstrated, that offers superior retinal imaging in a compact, portable package.