Advanced wavefront shaping for imaging through ocular opacities - ABSTRACT Optical technologies have become standard of care to assess the health of the posterior segment of the eye as they offer the highest spatial resolution among available clinical tools. However, the performances of optical imaging techniques quickly degrade in the presence of ocular opacities. Ocular opacities are widely occurring in both the lens and the cornea, which leaves several patient populations and/or clinical scenarios where posterior segment imaging is not available leading to a heightened risk of blindness due to undiagnosed retinal pathology. This proposal explores a novel approach to this open issue, i.e. all-optical characterization and correction of ocular opacifications with the goal of demonstrating high-resolution fundus imaging behind ocular opacities. Our central hypothesis is that ocular opacities, like other turbid media, degrade vision through scattering, which can be understood as a severe form of optical aberration, i.e. it can equivalently be mathematically described as a linear transformation and as such it can be corrected via advanced forms of wavefront shaping. Our research program is strongly founded on the tremendous growth of the field of imaging through turbid media (e.g. fog, clouds, screens), a field in which the two PIs are established experts and have reported cutting-edge advances. In proof-of-principle preliminary data, we have recently demonstrated Neural-network based Wavefront Shaping (NWS) in turbid media such as screens and biological tissue with superior performances to any comparable methods. Thus, our objective for this proposal is to demonstrate that NWS achieves optical correction of ocular opacities and to establish what optical performances and specifications are required as well as feasible to achieve high-resolution fundus imaging within the clinical ophthalmology settings. Our investigation will also enable establishing correction requirements and assessing improved performance potential of other modalities such as scanning laser ophthalmoscopy, fluorescence imaging, angiography as well as optical coherence tomography.
