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RESEARCH NEWS
A new view: tuneable lenses enable whole-eye imaging with OCT system
l Scientists may gain better insight into vitreous gel interaction with the retina
l Instrument 'enhances the quality of the OCT images'
A team of Polish researchers has developed an optical coherence tomography (OCT) system capable of providing detailed images of the entire eye using electrically tuneable lenses and a newly commercialised swept light source. Described in a paper published
in Optica, the new device is capable of producing higher quality images than existing equipment, and could make eye examinations faster and more comfortable by removing the need to use multiple instruments when looking at different areas of the eye.
‘Diseases such as glaucoma affect both
the front and back portions of the eye,’ said Ireneusz Grulkowski, whose research team at Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland, worked with Pablo Artal’s team at the Universidad de Murcia, Spain to develop the new imaging system. ‘An instrument that can examine the whole eye will improve the patient’s experience because they won’t have to go through imaging with different devices. It might also one day reduce the number of instruments – which can be quite expensive – needed in an ophthalmology clinic.’
Most clinical OCT instruments are
limited to imaging depths of two to three millimetres, and it is difficult to switch between imaging the front and back portions of the eye because of the eye’s elements that focus light onto the retina. These challenges are overcome in the
researchers’ system by using a tuneable lens, the parameters of which can be controlled dynamically using an electrical current. These varying parameters, unlike fixed parameters of standard glass and plastic lenses, enable the researchers to focus light in such a way to image an
10 Electro Optics March 2018
“An instrument that can examine the whole eye will improve the patient’s experience because they won’t have to go through imaging with different devices”
entire eye. ‘We incorporated the electrically tuneable lens into a custom-made system that represents the latest generation of OCT technology,’ said Grulkowski. ‘We set out to show that we could image both the front and back of the eye without changing instruments. However, we were also able to show that our instrument enhanced the image quality of the OCT images.’ The OCT system also incorporates a
newly commercialised swept light source – a laser that continuously changes wavelength very rapidly – that improves the resolution and speed of OCT compared to systems that use other light sources. The researchers also integrated high-speed electronics to achieve the imaging depth necessary to enable whole-eye imaging. By using the system to image the eyes
of seven healthy people, the researchers demonstrated that the resulting images led to measurements that correlated well with those obtained with an ocular biometer, the standard clinical device used today. The OCT system is not only capable of imaging both the front and back of the eye, but also the interfaces of the eye’s vitreous gel with the retina and lens in exceptional detail. This new imaging capability could allow scientists to better understand how the vitreous gel that fills the eye interacts with the retina and why it can sometimes become detached with aging. The researchers are now working to optimise the instrument for imaging the entire vitreous gel, not just where it interfaces with the lens and retina. The vitreous gel has not been studied intensively and is difficult to image because of its high transparency. The ability to image the entire vitreous could allow OCT to be used to guide procedures that involve the removal of the vitreous gel from the eye, which is sometimes done to repair retinal detachment.
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