REAL-TIME VISUALIZATION OF RETINAL MICROCIRCULATION BY LASER FLOWGRAPHY

A new real-time measuring system is developed to visualize the blood flow map of the human retina using dynamic laser speckle effects and a hardware logic circuit. The retina is illuminated with a diode laser spot through a retinal camera, and the speckle field at the image plane of the spot is scanned by an area sensor. The output signal is analog-to-digital (A/D) converted and the blur rate of the intensity at each pixel point is evaluated through a hardware logic circuit specially developed for this system. The results are displayed in 2-D color maps successively at a rate of 16 frames/s, which allows the real-time observation of retinal blood flow.