At this year’s annual EVER event, Dr. Jean-Jacques Gicquel organized a Special Interest Symposium on wavefront technologies in ophthalmology. Imagine Eyes founder Nicolas Chateau presented his views on the current and potential applications of adaptive optics in ophthalmology to a distinguished group of researchers and practitioners in that domain.

Applications of adaptive-optics in ophthalmology

N CHATEAU,  Imagine Eyes, Orsay, France

Purpose:

This presentation reviews the current and potential applications of adaptive optics (AO) in the area of ophthalmology.

Methods

AO was invented by astrophysicists in order to eliminate image blur and twinkling in large terrestrial telescopes. This technique cancels the optical distortions that are introduced by the earth atmosphere, a turbid and inhomogeneous medium, in the light emitted by distant stars. Like the atmosphere, the human eye is optically imperfect: it suffers from wavefront aberrations whose pattern and amount differ between individuals. This is the reason why AO has met several applications in ophthalmology. One part of the AO technology consists in measuring the distortions of light using a wavefront sensor: this technique has been integrated into wavefront aberrometers that routinely improve the precision of LASIK procedures

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Results

The full implementation of AO has recently led to other breakthrough devices. AO visual simulators are enhanced aberrometers that allow patients to visualize, at the pre-operative stage, the expected outcome of refractive surgery procedures, including presbyopic ablations. Several research laboratories have implemented AO to improve the resolution of various retinal imaging techniques (fundus camera, SLO, OCT) up to the scale of single retinal cells. Three-dimensional images of cone photoreceptors have recently been obtained with a resolution of 3μm, both in the longitudinal and transverse dimensions of the retinal tissue. Aside from this world-record, the presentation will also address the limitations of the technique and describe some of the work in progress towards the clinical applications of AO technology.

AO technology will likely provide new devices that meet unsatisfied needs in refractive surgery and retinal diagnostics.