Glaucoma causes irreversible damage to nerves in the retinal nerve fiber layer. A technique that could measure both the condition and thickness of the retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) would be very useful for the early detection and treatment of glaucoma. Polarization Sensitive Optical Coherence Tomography (PS-OCT) is a modality that measures the depth resolved optical birefringence of biological tissue. Since damage to the nerve fiber layer could decrease its birefringence, PS-OCT has the potential to enhance specificity in determining RNFL thickness and integrity in OCT images. In order to measure the RNFL birefringence on humans in vivo, a fiber-based PS-OCT set-up was built with which quasi real time images of the human retina were made. Preliminary measurements on a healthy retina show that the birefringence of the RNFL around the optic nerve head was equal to 34+/- 3 degree(s)/100 micrometers . In conclusion, to our knowledge, we present the first depth resolved birefringence measurements of the human RNFL in vivo.

Date Published: 13 June 2002
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 4611, Ophthalmic Technologies XII, (13 June 2002); doi: 10.1117/12.470592

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 4611:
Ophthalmic Technologies XII
Fabrice Manns; Per G. Soederberg; Arthur Ho, Editor(s)