Contactless optical coherence tomography of the eyes of freestanding individuals with a robotic scanner

Contactless, autonomous robotic alignment of optical coherence tomography for in vivo evaluation of diseased retinas

“…Robotically aligned OCT automatically tracks and compensates for patient motion in near real-time utilizing tracking cameras combined with open and closed loop control of the robot tool end effector and electronically controlled opto-mechanics (see Methods) (12). Face-tracking cameras and software identi ed the location of the patient's face and tracked the target eye of the patient.…”

“…We previously developed a robotically tracking and aligning OCT system that automatically acquired retinal OCT volumes in young, healthy volunteers with ~16° eld-of-view (FOV) that was limited by robot payload considerations and working distance safety restrictions (12). Here we report the development of a contactless and autonomously aligned robotic OCT system designed speci cally for imaging the diverse population found within retinal ophthalmology clinics (Fig.…”

“…To minimize mass and cost, we designed an air-spaced achromatic lens and con gured a pair of them in a 1:1 4F telescope con guration. Compared to our previous design, we further reduced the mass of our system by utilizing a 15 mm diameter 2D scanning mirror (Optotune MR-E-1) located prior to the galvo scanning mirror pair and conjugate to the retinal imaging plane for active lateral motion compensation (12,13,27). Diopter focus control was provided by a 3 mm diameter tunable lens (Optotune EL-3-10-NIR) (28) placed between the laser collimating lens and the 2D scanning mirror telescope.…”

“…For active axial motion compensation, we utilized a retrore ector mounted to a linear voice coil motor (VCM; H2W Technologies, VCS05-060-LB-01-MCH) whose position was updated based on pupil location as estimated by the pupiltracking cameras(Fig. 5B) (12,31,32).…”

“…Autonomous tracking and compensation of the patient's eye (Fig. 5F&G) was facilitated through the use of two calibrated face-tracking cameras (Intel RealSense D415; camera module integrated 850 nm and visible room light illumination) and three calibrated pupil-tracking cameras (FLIR Black y S BFS-U3-042M; 910 nm LED illumination integrated into OCT imaging opto-mechanics) (12). We speci cally chose the wavelength of these pupil-tracking LEDs to mitigate the effects of melanin in the ocular iris so that pupil detection was similar in both brown and blue irises (23,33).…”