Correcting ocular aberrations with a high stroke deformable mirror

Abstract

The capabilities of a novel deformable mirror to correct ocular aberrations are analyzed. The deformable mirror, (MIRA052 Imagine Eyes) is incorporated within a complex retinal imaging system able to produce simultaneous en-face optical coherence tomography (OCT) and scanning laser ophthalmoscopy (SLO) images of the retina. The performances of the deformable mirror have been examined by evaluating the amount of aberrations which the deformable mirror is able to correct for, the improvement in the signal-to-noise ratio and transversal resolution in both OCT and SLO images obtained from an artificial eye. Pairs of C-scan images were obtained at a frame rate of 2 Hz, with and without wave-front correction. The correction of aberrations increased the signal-to-noise ratio in images obtained from artificial eyes by up to 6 dB in the OCT channel and up to 31 dB in the SLO channel. Also, we demonstrated the high capability of the MIRA052 deformable mirror to correct for high amounts of wave-front aberrations.