Low-Coherence Wavefront Sensor for AO Imaging in Rodent Eyes

描述(由申请人提供)：人类眼病转基因小鼠模型的日益重要性使得细胞分辨率的活体眼底成像方式越来越受欢迎。由于啮齿动物眼睛的光学质量较差，目前几乎没有可行的高分辨率成像方法。这可能会导致对更昂贵和更耗时的组织学的更大依赖，否则如果有足够的成像技术，可能就不需要了。几种类型的自适应光学(AO)可变形镜(DM)技术已经成熟，其行程和分辨率可能足以补偿大型啮齿动物的眼睛像差。然而，目前首选的Shack-Hartmann波前传感技术可能已经达到了提取高阶像差的实用极限，足以在啮齿类动物的眼睛中实现衍射受限的AO性能。第一阶段计划的目标是开发和测试基于简单干涉设计的轴向分辨率、低相干波前传感方法的关键方面，以测量啮齿动物眼睛的高阶像差。我们建议证明，这种装置是补充夏克-哈特曼装置与双模测试系统，在良好表征的幻影眼。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The increasing importance of transgenic mouse models of human eye disease makes in vivo fundus imaging modalities at cellular resolution increasingly desirable. Due to the poor optical quality of rodent eyes, there are few viable methods for high resolution imaging. This can lead to greater dependence on more costly and time-consuming histology where it otherwise might not be necessary if adequate imaging techniques were readily available. Adaptive Optics (AO) deformable mirror (DM) technologies of several types have matured to the point where the stroke and resolution may be adequate to compensate large rodent eye aberrations. However, the currently preferred Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensing technology may have reached a practical limit for extracting high order aberrations sufficient for diffraction-limited AO performance in rodent eyes. The goal of the Phase I program is to develop and test key aspects of an axially resolved, low-coherence wavefront sensing method based on a simple interferometric design to measure high order aberrations in rodent eyes. We propose to show that this device is complementary to the Shack-Hartmann device with a dual mode test system in well-characterized phantom eyes.