Retinal Tracking for Enhances OCT Imaging

描述（由申请人提供）：物理科学公司（PSI）在卡尔蔡司眼科系统（CZOS）的支持下，成功完成了一项I期研究计划，展示了光学相干断层扫描（OCT）和专利PSI视网膜跟踪技术相结合的可行性。一项二期研究和开发计划提出创建跟踪OCT （TOCT）仪器，将显著增强视网膜成像和形态计量诊断。在活体眼睛中重现三维结构的能力，接近细胞分辨率，将有助于提高对疾病过程的理解，提高诊断程序的敏感性和特异性。目前，二维OCT成像速度慢，限制了临床上的诊断潜力。正常的眼动往往使横向OCT扫描配准难以纠正，产生图像误差和伪影。PSI的视网膜跟踪技术是一种高速，非成像系统，使用视网膜地标来实现精确的横向图像配准，并且跟踪误差小于OCT光束直径。精确排列的扫描结果可以相隔数月或数年进行比较。帧平均技术可以在不损失横向或纵向分辨率的情况下降低OCT散斑噪声。相邻的二维扫描可以连接成三维数据集。标准分辨率和高分辨率TOCT系统将组装并在新英格兰眼科中心的临床研究中进行测试。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI), with support from Carl Zeiss Ophthalmic Systems (CZOS), has successfully completed a Phase I research program demonstrating the feasibility of combining Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) and patented PSI retinal tracking technology. A Phase II research and development program is proposed to create Tracking OCT (TOCT) instrumentation that will significantly enhance retinal imaging and morphometric diagnostics. The capability to reproducibly map three-dimensional structures in the living eye, approaching cellular resolution, will lead to improved understanding of disease processes and improved sensitivity and specificity of diagnostic procedures. At present, the slow speed of 2-D OCT imaging limits diagnostic potential in the clinic. Normal eye movement often renders transverse OCT scan registration difficult to correct, creating image errors and artifacts. PSI's retinal tracking technology is a highspeed, non-imaging system that uses retinal landmarks to achieve precise transverse image registration, and with tracking errors smaller than the OCT beam diameter. Precisely aligned scans can be compared months, or years apart. Frame averaging techniques can reduce OCT speckle noise without loss of transverse or longitudinal resolution. Adjacent 2-D scans can be concatenated into 3-D data sets. Standard resolution and high resolution TOCT systems will be assembled and tested in clinical studies at New England Eye Center.