Topcon Corporation

Zaixing Mao

Zhenguo Wang

Kinpui Chan

Makoto Fujino

Kazuhiro Oomori

Yasufumi Fukuma

Jongsik Kim

Song Mei

Ying Dong

Jonathan Liu

Hideharu Suzuki

Bin Cao

An ophthalmologic apparatus includes an objective lens that faces a subject's eye, an illumination optical system that irradiates a cornea of the subject's eye with illumination light through the objective lens, and a corneal measurement optical system including an interference image capturing camera that takes an image of a corneal reflection light. The corneal reflection light is a reflection of the illumination light reflected from the cornea, through the objective lens. A numerical aperture G of the illumination optical system is larger than a numerical aperture g of the corneal measurement optical system.

Ophthalmologic apparatus

An ophthalmologic apparatus includes: an objective lens that faces a subject's eye; an alignment light emitting unit that irradiates the subject's eye with alignment light to perform measurement of alignment between the objective lens and the subject's eye; an alignment reflection light receiving unit that receives alignment reflection light, which is a reflection of the alignment light from the subject's eye; an anterior segment camera that receives corneal reflection light; and a holder positioned between the anterior segment camera and the objective lens to hold the anterior segment camera, wherein the holder includes an imaging transmissive portion that transmits the corneal reflection light to the anterior segment camera, a first light-transmissive portion that transmits the alignment light from the alignment light emitting unit, and a second light-transmissive portion that transmits the alignment reflection light from the subject's eye.

Ophthalmological device

A low coherence imaging method comprises acquiring image data of an object with an interferometric imaging system, where the image data is from a location of the object at first and second times; determining a first depth profile from the image data from the location at the first time and a second depth profile from the image data of the location at the second time; determining a change with respect to depth between the first and second depth profiles; and determining a property, or identifying a location, of at least one dynamic particle in the object based on the change between the first and second depth profiles. The method is able to identify, analyze, and/or visualize dynamic particles with features comparable to at least fluorescein angiography, indocyanine green angiography, confocal scanning laser fluorescein angiography, confocal scanning laser indocyanine green angiography, and fluorescence microscopy images, without the use of a dye.

Method and apparatus for low coherence interferometry

An interferometric method of identifying the thickness of an object that is too thin to be resolved by a Fourier transform of the interference signal includes applying a harmonic frequency modulation to an envelope of the interference signal. Where the object is a tear film, this method may be utilized to determine a thickness of the lipid layer of the tear film.

Method and apparatus for measuring tear film thickness using optical interference

An ophthalmologic apparatus includes: an objective lens that faces a subject's eye; a first illumination optical system that irradiates a cornea of the subject's eye with illumination light; and a corneal measurement optical system having an imaging element that takes an image of a corneal reflection light, which is a reflection of the illumination light, through the objective lens, and outputs an imaging signal. The corneal measurement optical system includes a first mirror arranged near the objective lens and a second mirror arranged near the imaging element. The first and second mirrors and are configured such that the corneal reflection light that enters and is reflected from the first mirror, and then enters and is reflected from the second mirror exits toward an incident side from which the corneal reflection light enters a reflection surface of the first mirror.

Shadows caused by opacities and obstructions (such as blood vessels) can block detection of structural information of objects below the shadow-causing structure, affecting visualization and analysis of those deeper structures. An image processing method for removing these shadows includes applying a low pass filter to an energy profile of an image to remove high frequency fluctuations in energy, thereby effectively recovering lower energy inside shadow regions and removing high frequency speckle. The image is then adjusted, for example by linear scaling, based on the filtered energy profile. Two dimensional filters may also be applied for volumes.

3D shadow reduction signal processing method for optical coherence tomography (OCT) images

A machine learning model is trained to identify the texture difference between the different layers of a multilayer object. By training with data in full 3D space, the resulting model is capable of predicting the probability that each pixel in a 3D image belongs to a certain layer. With the resulting probability map, comparing probabilities allows one to determine boundaries between layers, and/or other properties and useful information such as volume data.

3D quantitative analysis with deep learning

Ophthalmological images generated by coherent imaging modalities have multiple types of noise, including random noise caused by the imaging system and speckle noise caused by turbid objects such as living tissues. These noises can occur at different levels in different locations. A noise-reduction method and system of the present disclosure thus relates to applying different filters for different types of noise and/or different locations of images, sequentially or in parallel and combined, to produce a final noise-reduced image.

Image quality improvement methods for optical coherence tomography

An ophthalmologic apparatus includes: an ophthalmologic apparatus body having: an objective lens that faces a subject's eye; a first illumination optical system that irradiates a cornea of the subject's eye with illumination light emitted from a first illumination light source along an optical axis overlapping an optical axis center of the objective lens; an interference image capturing camera that takes an image of a corneal reflection light through the objective lens and outputs an imaging signal; and a calculation unit that calculates, based on a corneal reflection image, of a corneal reflection light, input from the interference image capturing camera, a thickness of a tear fluid film at each position on the corneal surface; and a guide rail that supports the ophthalmologic apparatus body. The guide rail supports the ophthalmologic apparatus body in a rotatable manner such that an optical axis center of the objective lens is positioned obliquely with respect to a horizontal direction orthogonal to a gravity direction.

A multimodal imaging system and method is capable of taking fundus images, automatically identifying regions of interest (ROIs) of the eye from the fundus images, and performing OCT imaging in the identified ROIs, where the OCT images can provide clinically relevant information for screening purposes. By automatically identifying the ROIs, expert intervention is not required to perform specialized OCT imaging and thus, such imaging and analysis can be provided at more facilities and for more subjects for a lower cost.

Automatically identifying regions of interest of an object from horizontal images using a machine learning guided imaging system

A method for measuring layer thicknesses of a multi-layer structure includes generating first and second 2D images of the structure, each image being generated by measuring an intensity of a reflection of incident lights, from different discrete narrow spectral bands, on the structure. Thicknesses for at least one layer of the structure are then determined based on the measured reflection intensities at those locations.

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Edgewater, NJ, United States of America

Zaixing Mao