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The project « Oeil » : astronomy enters hospital

1er avril 2005

The patients suffering from a retina disease will soon be able to profit from a new imager, directly inspired from astronomical technics : adaptive optics. This apparatus is under development supervised by researchers from Paris Observatory (LESIA). It already permits to image the retina and to visualise the photoreceptive cells with a resolution better than 3 microns. The objective is the early detection of retinal pathologies such as macular degenerescence due to age or glaucomes.

To measure the wave fronts re-emitted by an eye, the astronomers create initially in situ a genuine artificial star by making of a point source an image on the retina in the near infra-red. The deformations of the re-emitted wave fronts are permanently measured by the analyzer of wave front and are corrected by the deformable mirror. A luminous flash in visible light briefly illuminates the retina. The formed image, corrected by the deformable mirror, has then a maximum resolution.

Figure 1 :

The researchers can thus observe details whose size does not exceed 3 microns, compared to a few tens for the classical devices. On their images, they distinguish perfectly the cones, photoreceptive cells which pave the center of the retina. They are the ones touched in the case of a macular degeneration related to age or of a diabetic retinopathy, diseases able to lead to blindness. Thus, the new instrument will be the ideal tool to detect these pathologies more quickly, to follow their evolution and the effects of a treatment, to even guide a surgical operation. A protocol of clinical trials already began in the clinical Center of investigation from the Hospital of Quinze-Vingts in Paris on some 240 voluntary patients, succeeding now the researchers who played guinea-pigs to carry out the first images.

Reference

  • (1) The participants to the project are : LESIA, co-founder ; Laboratoire d’optique de l’Ecole Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielle, co-founder ; Laboratoire de Bio-Physique de la Vision de l’Hôpital Lariboisière, co-founder ; Société Mauna Kea Technologies, co-founder ; Société CILAS ; Imagine-Eyes and Imagine Optic ; Doctors from Hôpital des Quinze-Vingts de l’unité INSERM 592. The project is financed by : CNRS ; the ministère de l’Industrie ; the Région Ile-de-France ; Paris Observatory ; European Union.

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Contact

  • François Lacombe
    Observatoire de Paris, LESIA
  • Marie Glanc
    Observatoire de Paris, LESIA
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