title: Development of a novel instrument to measure the pulsatile movement of ocular tissues.
abstract: We demonstrate an optical instrument that can measure the axial displacement of different eye tissues, including the cornea and the fundus. The instrument is based on spectral-domain low-coherence interferometry, which extracts displacement information from sequential axial scans of the eye with 100 Hz sampling frequency and with a precision of 400 nm. Longitudinal retinal and corneal movements were successfully measured in vivo in live rats, and Fourier analysis of the signal revealed the signature of the respiratory and cardiac cycles at 1.0 and 3.5 Hz, respectively. The effective amplitudes of retinal and corneal displacements at the cardiac frequency were found to be about 1.10 and 1.37 mum, respectively. The synchrony and direction of these two movements relative to the systole and diastole were found to be nearly the same. This novel instrument can be applied to assess biomechanical properties of the eye, which could be important for early diagnosis and for understanding the pathophysiology of glaucoma and other ocular diseases.
authors.affiliation: Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique, Energie, Matériaux et Télécommunications, Varennes, Québec J3X 1S2, Canada.
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Singh
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Dion
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Costantino
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Wajszilber
authors.forename: M R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Lesk
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Ozaki
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D002829:Choroid / Q000098:blood supply; D003315:Cornea / Q000502:physiology*; D003941:Diagnostic Techniques, Ophthalmological / Q000295:instrumentation*; D005133:Eye Movements / Q000502:physiology*; D005583:Fourier Analysis; D006339:Heart Rate / Q000502:physiology; D007368:Interferometry / Q000295:instrumentation; D008027:Light; D010092:Oximetry; D011673:Pulsatile Flow; D051381:Rats; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012160:Retina / Q000502:physiology*