Abstract
Purpose :
To construct wide-field and high-resolution oxygen saturation maps of the eye fundus using a retinal oximeter and custom software to improve our understanding of oxygen metabolism of the retina in health and disease.
Methods :
We use the commercial dual-wavelength, spectrophotometric retinal oximeter Oxymap T1 (Oxymap, Iceland) to image the eye fundus of healthy volunteers and patients with eye diseases. Several images are obtained from each eye at different resolutions and fundus locations. Our custom software, based on the image processing programs ImageJ (NIH, USA) and i2kRetina (DualAlign, LLC), automatically constructs a seamless mosaic of the images complete with a color-coded map of oxygen saturation values for every point on the retinal vessel tree.
Results :
Our detailed oxygen saturation maps combine a wider effective field of view, obtained by automatic mosaicing of several images, and higher spatial resolution than has been published before to our knowledge. The resulting images allow a more accurate assessment of topographical variability in oxygen metabolism and intravascular gradients resulting from laminar oxygen transport. Improved spatial definition allows measurements of smaller vessels than was previously possible with the oximeter used.
Conclusions :
Our novel wide-field, high-resolution oxygen saturation maps yield a more complete picture of patterns of variability in retinal vessel oxygen saturation than has been previously possible. We expect they will be a valuable tool in further studies on the role of oxygen metabolism in the retina.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2016 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Seattle, Wash., May 1-5, 2016.