Adaptive-glasses wavefront sensorless full-field OCT for high-resolution retinal imaging over a wide field-of-view

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel adaptive-glasses wavefront sensorless full-field OCT system that achieves high-resolution retinal imaging over a wide field-of-view by using a multi-actuator adaptive lens, simplifying the setup and improving clinical applicability.

Contribution

It introduces a compact adaptive-glasses approach with a multi-actuator lens for wide-field, high-resolution retinal OCT imaging without complex wavefront sensors.

Findings

Enhanced signal-to-noise ratio in retinal OCT images

Achieved 3D cellular resolution over a 5° field-of-view

No apparent anisoplanatism observed

Abstract

The highest three-dimensional (3D) resolution possible in in-vivo retinal imaging is achieved by combining optical coherence tomography (OCT) and adaptive optics (AO). However, this combination brings important limitations, such as small field-of-view and complex, cumbersome systems, preventing so far the translation of this technology from the research lab to clinics. In this Letter, we introduce an approach that avoids these limitations by using a multi-actuator adaptive lens just in front of the eye, in a technique we call the adaptive-glasses wavefront sensorless approach. We implemented this approach on our compact full-field OCT (FFOCT) retinal imager without increasing its footprint or optical complexity. The correction of ocular aberrations through the adaptive-glasses approach increased the FFOCT signal-to-noise ratio and enabled us to image different retinal layers with a 3D cellular resolution in a 5{\deg} $\times$ 5{\deg} field-of-view, without apparent anisoplanatism.