Adaptive Optics for Medical Imaging

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"Vision-robbing diseases are a major burden on the global healthcare system and a severe detriment to human quality of life. In recent years, cutting-edge technologies like optical coherence tomography (OCT), OCT angiography (OCTA), and adaptive optics (AO) have already changed how these diseases are researched and treated. However, these technologies still face technical barriers that prevent their widespread adoption as the clinical tool-of-choice. In particular, the promising AO-OCT and AO-OCTA combined system designs which, despite having greatly accelerated ophthalmology research, have yet to be commercialized and deployed in eye care clinics due to challenges like human patient motion.The experiences documented on my CV during my undergraduate and graduate education have provided me with a strong foundation in experiential learning. I have professional-grade skills in biomedical image data acquisition, processing, analysis, and visualization, and am proficient in hardware design of optical systems. Specifically, my prior research has placed special emphasis on developing solutions for human motion artifact, which severely degrades biomedical image quality. I am also well-versed in human anatomy, especially the pathological impacts of blindness-inducing diseases and how their biomarkers manifest within biomedical images. Under the guidance of my proposed supervisor, Prof. Marinko V. Sarunic, I am well-poised to design and implement research studies that will deploy advanced ophthalmic tools to investigate new biomarkers for retinal diseases including diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma, and macular degeneration. Specifically, emphasis will be placed upon the design and deployment of optical systems featuring adaptive optics optical coherence tomography (AO-OCT) technology and novel image processing software to complement them. The world-leading combination of UCL's departments of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, Institute of Ophthalmology, and Moorfields Eye Hospital is a unique intersectional environment in which I may generate new knowledge in the pursuit of preventing human blindness."