Adaptive optics retinal imaging in patients with retinal disease

Conventional retinal imaging has become standard care for the diagnosis and management of patients with retinal disease. Limitations in the resolution of conventional retinal imaging technologies caused by the optical imperfections of the eye has precluded the use of cellspecific retinal biomarkers using this type of imaging. High-resolution in vivo retinal imaging with an adaptive optics scanning laser ophthalmoscope (AOSLO) allows degenerative changes in the retina to be visualised at a cellular level, making the use of cell-specific imaging biomarkers possible. With the development of new therapies for retinal disease, such as gene replacement therapy, cell-based therapy or pharmacotherapy, cell-specific biomarkers of disease are becoming increasingly important for monitoring treatment outcomes.

The overall aims of this research project are to investigate the AOSLO as a clinical tool and to develop fully automated image processing and analysis pipelines for AOSLO images from patients with retinal disease. These aims will be achieved by investigating the relationship between multimodal conventional retinal imaging and AOSLO imaging in participants with Stargardt disease (an inherited retinal disease affecting the central vision) to determine if high-resolution in vivo retinal imaging will provide additional clinically relevant information, and developing and validating fully automated algorithms for reference frame selection and cone identification with the ultimate aim of using them on images from patients with retinal disease.