Multispectral Retinal Imaging and Mapping of Naturally Occurring Fluorophore and Chromophore Distributions in Health and Early Pathology

University Of Maryland, College Park, College Park MD

Investigators

Abstract

0854233 Czaja The overall objective of this proposal is to integrate robust automated multispectral image analysis methods with multispectral retinal reflectance and autofluorescence imaging to provide quantitative maps of naturally occurring fluorophores and chromophore distri-butions within the retina. The resulting high-resolution multi-component molecular maps would be applied to better understand molecular events in normal retinal aging and in early retinal disease progression. Tasks: - To optimize the quality of molecular image maps generated by automated image analysis methods from different multispectral sets of autofluorescence and reflectance images obtained using special filter sets in standard fundus cameras. Envisioned as an iterative process of refinement of filters, imaging protocols and analysis tools. - To apply spectral linear demixing models for extraction of pure subpixel spectral signatures to obtain clinically important changes in local concentrations of multiple endogenous molecular species - To develop spectral classification schemes based on dimension reduction algorithms to classify local cellular function and pathology - To develop locally supported multi-scale (wavelet) representation systems for sparse representation of reproducible features in order to follow changes overtime, particularly for different classes of early pathologic lesions on the order of 100 microns.