Image stabilization for scanning laser ophthalmoscopy.

A scanning laser ophthalmoscope with an integrated retinal tracker (TSLO) was designed, constructed, and tested in human subjects without mydriasis. The TSLO collected infrared images at a wavelength of780 nm while compensating for all transverse eye movements. An active, high-speed, hardware-based tracker was able to lock onto many common features in the fundus, including the optic nerve head, blood vessel junctions, hypopigmentation, and the foveal pit. The TSLO has a system bandwidth of ~1 kHz and robustly tracked rapid and large saccades of approximately 500 deg/sec with an accuracy of 0.05 deg. Image stabilization with retinal tracking greatly improves the clinical potential of the scanning laser ophthalmoscope for imaging where fixation is difficult or impossible and for diagnostic applications that require long duration exposures to collect meaningful information.