In vivo imaging of human retinal structure and function with adaptive optics imaging

Abstract: The human eye provide a clear window in which the neuronal and vascular structure of the central nervous system can be observed noninvasively at the histological level. Retinal imaging is a major diagnostic modality for retinal disease, and can play a critical role for diagnosing systemic diseases due to the unique availability of the eye for optical imaging. However, high resolution retinal imaging at the cellular level is impeded by the imperfect optical system of the human eye. To overcome this defect, we borrowed adaptive optics (AO), a technique that was originally conceived for compensating for the image blur caused by the atmospheric turbulence in astronomy, for assisting the retinal imaging system. In this seminar I will first present you how AO enabled diffraction limited retinal imaging in the living human eye, and describe several AO imaging instruments that have been developed in my lab. I will then demonstrate how we use these instruments to understand the mechanism by which common retinal disease (e.g., age-related macular degeneration) causes vision loss, and show you how we learn the retinal function at the single blood cell level in the smallest capillaries of the human retina.