Real-time eye motion compensation for OCT imaging with tracking SLO

Area of Science:

• Ophthalmology
• Biomedical Imaging
• Optical Engineering

Background:

• Fixational eye movements are a significant source of artifacts in optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging, even with faster acquisition speeds.
• Stabilizing ophthalmic imaging systems in real-time is a key strategy to mitigate these motion-induced artifacts.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe and quantify the performance of a novel tracking OCT system.
• To evaluate the system's effectiveness in minimizing artifacts caused by various types of eye movements.

Main Methods:

• Integration of a phase-stabilized optical frequency domain imaging (OFDI) system with an eye tracking scanning laser ophthalmoscope (TSLO).
• Implementation of active eye tracking to minimize artifacts from eye drift and micro saccades.
• Development of a trigger signal for rescanning corrupted B-scans due to tracking failures (blinks, large saccades).

Main Results:

• Active eye tracking successfully minimized artifacts from eye drift and micro saccades.
• Tracking lock failures triggered OCT system to rescan corrupted B-scans.
• Residual motion artifacts were reduced to 0.32 minutes of arc (~1.6 µm) in vivo.
• High-quality images of the optic nerve head and lamina cribrosa pore structure were acquired.

Conclusions:

• The developed tracking OCT system effectively reduces motion artifacts in OCT imaging.
• This technology enables high-resolution imaging of delicate ocular structures like the optic nerve head and lamina cribrosa.
• Real-time eye tracking stabilization is crucial for artifact reduction in high-speed OCT.