Versatile Eye Tracking for Improved High-resolution Retinal Imaging

Project Summary/AbstractPhysical Sciences Inc (PSI) proposes to develop a robust eye tracking technology to enhance the quality of high-resolution retinal imaging videos by significantly reducing the image artifacts induced by involuntary eye motion. The living human eye is constantly moving. A constant visual stimulus can make the photoreceptors or the ganglion cells (GC) become unresponsive. The eye movement constantly changes the stimuli that fall on the cones/GC’s, making the image clearer. However, eye motion has deleterious effects in retinal imaging and image stabilization is needed to attenuate these effects. Adaptive optics (AO) systems are being extended to precision stimulus delivery, microperimetry, measurement of intrinsic retinal signals, psychophysics, and structural and functional vision studies in the research lab and the clinic. The multi-channel AO retinal imager (MAORI) developed by PSI is a new tool for researchers and clinicians to investigate and monitor changes of retinal microstructures due to disease progression or response to treatment. However, one of the main challenges for routine clinical application of high- resolution retinal imaging remains eye motion. We propose to use retinal tracking to improve the efficiency of an imaging session by significantly reducing the number of uncorrectable images in each data set, and therefore by minimizing the time that both the patient and the medical personnel spend imaging. PSI will build on our expertise in eye tracking and high-resolution retinal imaging and leverage recent advances in real-time video image stabilization developed in vision and computer science. PSI will develop a plug-and- play solution that can be adapted to any imaging platform that requires image stabilization. A stand-alone device that can be incorporated with minimal modifications into existing platforms will help transfer high- resolution retinal imaging from research labs into routine clinical applications.Project NarrativeThe main focus of the proposed research is to develop a universal SLO-image based eye tracking system in a stand-alone package that can be used to retrofit existing platforms. The added tracking function will stabilize high-resolution images, enable more efficient retinal imaging sessions, and help advance retinal imaging applications into routine clinic use.