In-vivo, High Contrast Imaging of the Human Rod Photoreceptor Mosaic

项目摘要 目的是提高所拍摄的杆状感光细胞镶嵌的体内图像的分辨率和对比度 配备高分辨率自适应光学(AO)视网膜摄像机。在成像方面取得了巨大的成功 其他类型的细胞，如视锥细胞、视网膜色素上皮和白细胞，但到目前为止还没有人 报道了这些棒状物的体内证据。 该项目将研究先进的光学技术，这些技术可以与声光相结合，以进一步改善 在视杆细胞和中心凹视锥的空间尺度上对比视网膜图像。这些可能是高级口罩 为了抑制图像中不需要的结构，并辅以使用斯泰尔等方法- 克劳福德效应和反卷积。例如，实现这一目标将允许对单个杆状细胞进行计数 并计算细胞密度，然后将其与组织学测量进行比较。 最初，年轻的、正常的受试者将被成像以改进和优化新的成像方法。作为 随着工作的进展，这项研究将检查针对视杆细胞的疾病，如视网膜色素变性和年龄 与黄斑变性相关，并将观察到的变化与标准临床测试相关联。 这项工作将有助于更好地了解正常和疾病眼睛的视网膜结构。使用新的 在动物模型中开发的药物治疗方法，杆状细胞的直接非侵入性成像将提供 当这些疗法过渡到人体临床试验时，这是一个重要的结果衡量标准。

Project Summary The goal is to enhance the resolution and contrast of in-vivo images of the rod photoreceptor mosaic taken with high resolution adaptive optics (AO) equipped retinal cameras. There has been great success in imaging other cell types such as the cones, retinal pigment epithelium and leukocytes cells but to date nobody has reported in-vivo evidence for the rods. The project will examine advanced optical techniques that can be combined with AO to further improve the contrast of the retinal images at the spatial scale of the rods and foveal cones. These may be advanced masks to suppress unwanted structure in the images complemented with approaches such as using the Stiles- Crawford effect and deconvolution. Achieving this goal will allow one, for example, to count individual rod cells and calculate cell densities which can then be compared to histological measures. Initially, young, normal subjects will be imaged to refine and optimize the new imaging approaches. As the work progresses, the study will examine diseases that target the rod cells such as retinitis pigmentosa and age related macular degeneration and relate the changes observed to standard clinical tests. This work will lead to better understanding of retinal structure in both normal and diseased eyes. With new drug treatments being developed in animal models, the direct non-invasive imaging of rod cells would provide an important outcome measure when these therapies are transitioned into human clinical trials.