Model Predictive Temperature Control for Retinal Laser Treatments

Manual, individual adjustment of the laser power in retinal laser therapies is time-consuming, is inaccurate with respect to uniform effects, and can only prevent over- or undertreatment to a limited extent. Automatic closed-loop temperature control allows for similar temperatures at each irradiated spot despite varying absorption. This is of crucial importance for subdamaging hyperthermal treatments with no visible effects and the safety of photocoagulation with short irradiation times. The aim of this work is to perform extensive experiments on porcine eye explants to demonstrate the benefits of automatic control in retinal laser treatments.

To ensure a safe and reliable temperature rise, we utilize a model predictive controller. For model predictive control, the current state and the spot-dependent absorption coefficients are estimated by an extended Kalman filter (EKF). Therein, optoacoustic measurements are used to determine the temperature rise at the irradiated areas in real time. We use fluorescence vitality stains to measure the lesion size and validate the proposed control strategy.

By comparing the lesion size with temperature values for cell death, we found that the EKF accurately estimates the peak temperature. Furthermore, the proposed closed-loop control scheme works reliably with regard to similar lesion sizes despite varying absorption with a smaller spread in lesion size compared to open-loop control.

Our closed-loop control approach enables a safe subdamaging treatment and lowers the risk for over- and undertreatment for mild coagulations in retinal laser therapies.

We demonstrate that modern control strategies have the potential to improve retinal laser treatments for several diseases.