High-speed measurement of retinal arterial blood flow in the living human eye with adaptive optics ophthalmoscopy

Abstract

We present a technique to measure the rapid blood velocity in large retinal vessels with high spatiotemporal resolution. Red blood cell motion traces in the vessels were non-invasively imaged using an adaptive optics near-confocal scanning ophthalmoscope at a frame rate of 200 fps. We developed software to measure blood velocity automatically. We demonstrated the ability to measure the spatiotemporal profiles of the pulsatile blood flow with a maximum velocity of 95–156 mm/s in retinal arterioles with a diameter >100 µm. High-speed and high-resolution imaging increased the dynamic range, enhanced sensitivity, and improved the accuracy when studying retinal hemodynamics.