Abstract
Purpose: :
Investigate the effects of stabilization on acquisition of high-resolution retinal sections with a novel software-based tracking system integrated with a clinical optical coherence tomography (OCT) system
Methods: :
Twenty-eight eyes of 28 patients were examined by both standard RTvue-OCT software and a novel software-based tracking system installed in the same OCT. The system has a refresh rate of 30 samples per second. Both tracking and nontracking OCT images were aligned and added, signal-to-noise ratio actually improved for both instances and random speckle noise was suppressed by averaging up to 128 frames
Results: :
Tracking is highly accurate and reproducible resulting in the ability to scan the same retinal location. The results show qualitative improvement of the OCT scans and a reduction in the variance of the position compared to standard Rtvue OCT software.
Conclusions: :
: Because the software-based tracking system uses physical landmarks, precisely aligned scans can be compared over time. The higher speed makes it possible to track rapid eye movements, such as saccades, that cannot be properly tracked with other systems. Retinal morphology can thus be accurately recorded and monitored over time to detect subtle changes.
Keywords: imaging methods (CT, FA, ICG, MRI, OCT, RTA, SLO, ultrasound) • imaging/image analysis: clinical • retina