Automated retinal robotic laser system instrumentation

Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin's Biomedical Engineering Laser Laboratory investigating the medical applications of lasers have worked toward the development of a retinal robotic laser system. The ultimate goal of this ongoing project is to precisely place and control the depth of laser lesions for the treatment of various retinal diseases such as diabetic retinopathy and retinal tears. Researchers at the USAF Academy's Department of Electrical Engineering have also become involved with this research due to similar interests. Separate low speed prototype subsystems have been developed to control lesion depth using lesion reflectance feedback parameters and lesion placement using retinal vessels as tracking landmarks. Both subsystems have been successfully demonstrated in vivo on pigmented rabbits using an argon continuous wave laser. Work is ongoing to build a prototype system to simultaneously control lesion depth and placement. The instrumentation aspects of the prototype subsystems were presented at SPIE Conference 1877 in January 1993. Since then our efforts have concentrated on combining the lesion depth control subsystem and the lesion placement subsystem into a single prototype capable of simultaneously controlling both parameters. We have designated this combined system CALOSOS for Computer Aided Laser Optics System for Ophthalmic Surgery. An initial CALOSOS prototype design is provided. We have also investigated methods to improve system response time. The use of high speed non-standard frame rate CCD cameras and high speed local bus frame grabbers hosted on personal computers are being investigated. A review of system testing in vivo to date is provided in SPIE Conference proceedings 2374-49 (Novel Applications of Lasers and Pulsed Power, Dual-Use Applications of Lasers: Medical session).