First-order design of off-axis reflective ophthalmic adaptive optics systems using afocal telescopes

Abstract

Scanning laser ophthalmoscopes (SLOs) and optical coherence tomographs are the state-of-the-art retinal imaging instruments, and are essential for early and reliable diagnosis of eye disease. Recently, with the incorporation of adaptive optics (AO), these instruments have started to deliver near diffraction-limited performance in both humans and animal models, enabling the resolution of the retinal ganglion cell bodies, their processes, the cone photoreceptor and the retinal pigment epithelial cells mosaics. Unfortunately, these novel instruments have not delivered consistent performance across human subjects and animal models. One of the limitations of current instruments is the astigmatism in the pupil and imaging planes, which degrades image quality, by preventing the wavefront sensor from measuring aberrations with high spatial content. This astigmatism is introduced by the sequence of off-axis reflective elements, typically spherical mirrors, used for relaying pupil and imaging planes. Expressions for minimal astigmatism on the image and pupil planes in off-axis reflective afocal telescopes formed by pairs of spherical mirrors are presented. The formulas, derived from the marginal ray fans equation, are valid for small angles of incidence (≤15°), and can be used to design laser cavities, spectrographs and vision adaptive optics systems. An example related to this last application is discussed.