Rapid measurement of individual cone photoreceptor pointing using focus diversity

A novel method is presented to rapidly measure the pointing direction of individual human cone photoreceptors using adaptive-optics (AO) retinal imaging. For a fixed entrance pupil position, the focal plane is rapidly modulated to image the guided light in various axial planes. For cones with different pointing directions, this focus diversity will cause a shift in their apparent position, allowing for their relative pointing to be determined. For four normal human subjects, retinal images were acquired, registered, and the positions of individual cones tracked throughout the dataset. Variation in cone tilt was 0.02 radians, agreeing with other objective measurements on the same subjects at the same retinal locations.