Hyperspectral imaging system for the fast recording of the ocular fundus

• Autores: Tommaso Alterini
• Directores de la Tesis: Fernando Díaz Douton (dir. tes.), Meritxell Vilaseca Ricart (dir. tes.)
• Lectura: En la Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) ( España ) en 2021
• Idioma: español
• Materias:
  • Física
    • Óptica
      • Instrumentos fotográficos
      • Fotografía
  • Ciencias tecnológicas
    • Tecnología de la instrumentación
      • Instrumentos médicos
      • Instrumentos ópticos
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• Resumen

  • Vision loss affects physical, psychological, and emotional wellbeing and social life as well. High life expectancy and health policies are translated into an aging population worldwide, which has higher risk of eye’s disorders and diseases. Therefore, new systems able to contribute at non-invasive objective diagnosis of ocular diseases are demanded. In this context, optical imaging techniques have a primary role as they allow obtaining information from almost any part of the eye. In particular, many important eye and systemic diseases early manifest themselves in the retina and, since the pioneer study of Helmholtz, many resources have been spent to acquire good images of the ocular fundus. In common clinics, fundus photography is restricted to color imaging sensors with only three spectral bands, and, due to metamerism, many structures might remain hidden. Recently, hyperspectral imaging techniques have come to view as a promising and powerful tool for the spectral analysis of several retinal diseases, increasing the amount of information extractable from fundus photography. However, in the literature, examples are restricted to the visible range of the electromagnetic spectrum, have few bands and/or make use of modified commercial fundus cameras. Accordingly, the goal of this project is to build a novel hyperspectral fundus camera based on light-emitting diodes allowing the fast imaging of the retina both in the visible and in the near infrared region of the spectrum, which has never been explored, through a considerable number of spectral bands. This fundus camera has been designed, tested and developed with new custom-made illumination and detection strategies combined with novel cutting- edge technology at the Center for Sensors, Instruments and Systems Development (CD6) of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC, Terrassa). Finally, after a scrupulous clinical study carried out at the Instituto de Microcirugía Ocular (IMO, Barcelona) and at the University Vision Center of UPC (CUV-UPC, Terrassa), qualitative and quantitative results are presented for healthy and diseased eyes. The available spectroscopic information and the visualization of retinal structures and lesions, especially those affecting the choroidal vasculature and retinal pigment epithelium that are hardly visible in conventional color fundus images, underline the clinical potential of this system as a new tool for ophthalmic diagnosis.