According to previous studies, the measurement of the human iris pigmentation can be exploited to detect certain eye pathological conditions in their early stage. In this paper, we propose an instrument and a method to perform hyperspectral quantitative measurements of the iris spectral reflectance. The system is based on a simple imaging setup, which includes a monochrome camera mounted on a standard ophthalmic microscope movement controller, a monochromator, and a flashing LED-based slit lamp. To assure quantitative measurements, the system is properly calibrated against a NIST reflectance standard. Iris reflectance images can be obtained in the spectral range 495-795 nm with a resolution of 25 nm. Each image consists of 1280 x 1024 pixels having a spatial resolution of 18 μm. Reflectance spectra can be calculated both from discrete areas of the iris and as the average of the whole iris surface. Preliminary results suggest that hyperspectral imaging of the iris can provide much more morphological and spectral information with respect to conventional qualitative colorimetric methods.

Date Published: 8 February 2017
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 10045, Ophthalmic Technologies XXVII, 100451S (8 February 2017); doi: 10.1117/12.2252184

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 10045:
Ophthalmic Technologies XXVII
Fabrice Manns; Per G. Söderberg; Arthur Ho, Editor(s)