System and method combining corneal elastography with anterior segment structural imaging

Abstract

The invention discloses a system and method for combining cornea elasticity imaging with anterior segment structure imaging. The system is composed of an air injection excitation system and a sweep frequency OCT imaging system capable of carrying out transverse two-dimension scanning. The air injection excitation system provides air flow coaxial with imaging light beams and continuously distributed in the cornea transverse direction to enable the cornea to generate stain. The OCT system is used for imaging for the cornea, and interference spectrum information obtained by the imaging system is used for obtaining the strain distribution of the cornea along with the depth changes through a phase sensitivity algorithm; then two-dimensional or three-dimensional distribution diagram of all parameters of the cornea bio-mechanics can be reconstructed, so that elasticity imaging of the corner is achieved. The system can carry out two-dimensional or three-dimensional imaging on the anterior segment structure. The elasticity information plays an important role in the early diagnosis of the cornea disease, pre-operation estimation in the operation processing process, operative design, process simulation and post-operative evaluation, and is combined with the information of the anterior segment structure so as to provide the more complete basis for the diagnosis and the operative treatment of the ophthalmology disease.

Description

Technical field [0001] The present invention relates to corneal optical coherence elastography and anterior segment optical coherence tomography technology, in particular to a corneal biomechanical information and structure information of the anterior segment using swept optical coherence tomography technology combined with a phase sensitive algorithm System and method for in vivo measurement. Background technique [0002] The mechanical properties of living systems are one of the important research contents in the field of biomechanics, and one of the research methods of mechanical properties is based on elastography. Elastography includes two parts: an excitation system and a strain detection imaging system. The excitation system applies dynamic or static stress to the sample to make it deform. The depth-related strain distribution in the sample deformation area is obtained by various displacement detection imaging methods. The distribution of the depth-related stress, strain,...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

The system has the following disadvantages: 1) The corneal displacement map is based on the OCT structure map, which limits the displacement resolution (lower than the axial resolution of OCT, usually in the order of μm); 2) In order to detect the change of displacement, it is necessary to The strain of μm and above is applied to the cornea; 3) The light energy reaching the two optical paths of the balanced detector is unbalanced, which cannot effectively eliminate the interference of the DC term in the interference spectrum; 4) The diameter of the jet tube in the sample arm limits the imaging range of the system , which is not conducive to the observation of the global deformation of the cornea; 5) only observe a certain fixed point of interest

However, in the above two systems, there are also the following shortcomings: 1) The conjugate image produced by the inverse Fourier transform of the real interference spectrum signal limits the imaging depth of the system; 2) When the focused excitation airflow applies point excitation to soft tissue , it is necessary to detect the excitation information that changes with time at each imaging point, which reduces the real-time performance of the system; 3) The imaging points are some isolated points, and the propagation of the surface elastic wave is reconstructed from these points, so the obtained discrete elastic information, rather than complete information; 4) It is necessary to ensure the synchronization of excitation and scanning, and it is necessary to provide repeatable control of excitation, which increases the complexity of the system

However, so far, there has been no report on the combination of the two

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