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Adaptive optics helps Rochester researchers study retinal diseases
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Adaptive optics technology is helping a group of researchers at the University of Rochester study retinal diseases. The technique, a version of which is used in some systems for customized refractive surgery, has helped the researchers determine that colorblind people may have up to one-third of their retinal cones missing without an effect on vision.
“If a third of the light-receiving cells in your eye are absent and you don’t even notice it, it means that when a patient complains to a doctor about waning light sensitivity, the damage must already be very serious,” said Joseph Carroll, a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Visual Science at the school, in a press release.
Dr. Carroll noted that “adaptive optics becomes incredibly powerful when coupled with other technologies.” In this case, he said, the technique was combined with retinal densitometry to determine the amount and kind of pigment in the retina at the cellular level.
The adaptive optics technique was conceived by an astronomer to correct for aberrations in the atmosphere, the press release noted. The principles of the technique have since been applied to studying the aberrations in the human optical system.
The Rochester researchers’ work has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.