High-definition, wide field of view corneal imaging

The cornea is the primary focusing structure of our visual system. Infections and diseases in the tissue can impair vision and lead to blindness, even in eyes with intact neurosensory function. Corneal disease is one of the leading causes of visual deficiency and blindness in the world. Tissue evaluation is an important step for assessing the health of the donor cornea and its appropriateness for different types of placement, yet this process suffers from high subjectivity. High-definition corneal imaging is needed to assist in selection of the most appropriate tissue for transplant. Progress on this front would greatly serve public need, as the cornea is the most commonly transplanted tissue worldwide, with nearly 185,000 transplants annually. Thus, a more sensitive and quantitative method for objective evaluation of tissue at eye banks is needed. We have developed a 3D high-definition imaging instrument based on Gabor-Domain Optical Coherence Microscopy (GDOCM). Our SBIR Phase I research successfully accomplished all Aims and demonstrated the feasibility of quantitative assessment of corneal tissue over a large field of view with GDOCM. Our Phase I results demonstrated that GDOCM has the following key advantages over existing corneal imaging techniques, which include specular and confocal microscopy: 1) improved accuracy of tissue qualification with 4-10x increase in field of view that reduces sampling error – this will provides a truer assessment of the overall tissue characteristics; 2) ability to simultaneously measure corneal thickness, quantify endothelial cell density, and identify morphological variations due to corneal disease – this will lead to complete corneal evaluation in a single instrument; 3) leveraging machine learning innovations to minimize variability induced by users – this will result in a more objective evaluation; 4) enhanced 3D cellular-level imaging of thin translucent endothelial cells – this will enable a detailed understanding of cell viability. The results of the proposed Phase studies II will demonstrate that GDOCM can provide high-definition, 3D visualization of corneal structures with immediate commercial application for qualification of donor tissue in eye banks, and with a path to in vivo clinical imaging of patients with corneal disease.Current corneal evaluation methods employed at eye banks have limited field of view and/or insufficient resolution, and their results suffer from high subjectivity. We propose to commercialize a Gabor-domain optical coherence microscope to enable non-invasive, high-definition, wide field of view imaging in 3D for eye banks.