High resolution retinal imaging of cone-rod dystrophy

Abstract

Conventional ophthalmoscopes used to image the living human retina provide limited resolution due to their inability to overcome aberrations inherent in the eye's optics. Thus many retinal diseases remain undetected until significant (and often irreversible) macroscopic retinal damage has occurred. Adaptive optics is a non-invasive technology that provides high resolution views of the living retina. Here we show high resolution retinal images of Cone-Rod Dystrophy obtained from the University of Rochester's 2nd Generation Adaptive Optics Ophthalmoscope. Visual fields and conventional fundus photography revealed a ring scotoma beginning at 2–3 deg eccentricity. Adaptive optics images were obtained within both degenerated and normal retinal regions. Within the scotoma, we observed large areas of retina devoid of wave-guiding cones. In contrast, readily visible areas of degeneration were not seen in images of “normal” retina. However, the cones in this region appeared larger than normal and the cone density was reduced. Adaptive optics imaging non-invasively reveals microscopic features of Cone-Rod Dystrophy that cannot be obtained with current clinical methods and may enable new longitudinal studies of the mechanism and progression of diseases such as Cone-Rod Dystrophy.

Footnotes

 We acknowledge financial support from the National Eye Institute (J.W., J.C., & D.R.W.), the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (M.C.) and the Steinbach Foundation (D. R. W.). This work has been supported in part by the National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center for Adaptive Optics, managed by the University of California at Santa Cruz under co-operative agreement No. AST-9876783.