High-Performance, Low-Cost Optical Coherence Tomography System Using a Jetson Orin Nano for Real-Time Control and...

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Optics
• Medical Imaging Technology
• Ophthalmology Instrumentation

Background:

• Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is crucial for diagnosing retinal diseases.
• Reducing the size and cost of OCT systems is key to expanding their clinical applications, especially in point-of-care and low-resource settings.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a compact, low-cost OCT system with enhanced performance.
• To integrate a system on module with GPU-accelerated parallel processing for improved OCT capabilities.

Main Methods:

• Leveraged a NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano system on module for GPU-accelerated parallel processing.
• Integrated the module into a low-cost OCT system designed for retinal imaging.
• Benchmarked the instrument's performance against existing low-cost OCT systems.

Main Results:

• Achieved a fivefold increase in processing speed without compromising image quality.
• Reduced system volume by 67% and computing cost by 22%.
• Maintained the compact and low-cost characteristics of the OCT system.

Conclusions:

• The developed OCT system offers significantly improved performance, reduced size, and lower cost.
• Enhanced imaging performance increases the accessibility and clinical utility of OCT systems.
• Accelerated clinical adoption of low-cost OCT through improved computational performance.