Expand this Topic clickable element to expand a topic
Skip to content
Optica Publishing Group

Spatially resolved birefringence of the retinal nerve fiber layer assessed with a retinal laser ellipsometer

Not Accessible

Your library or personal account may give you access

Abstract

A retinal laser ellipsometer has been developed by coupling a Fourier ellipsometer to a laser scanning system. The instrument has been used to assess the origin and the amount of change in the state of polarization of a laser beam that has double passed the retina around the optic nerve head of postmortem human eyes. Eight eyes with no history of glaucoma were studied. At 200 points around the optic nerve head of each eye the Mueller matrices of the retina were examined for the amount of retardation, the orientation of the optic axis, and the amount of dichroism. The degree of polarization preservation of the detected light varied between 50% and 87%. Little dichroism was found, and there was no obvious correlation to the physical arrangement of any retinal structure. However, there was a substantial amount of linear uniaxial birefringence with the optic axis perpendicular to the incident laser beam. Furthermore the calculated optic axis direction showed a strong correlation with the physical orientation of the radial symmetrically arranged retinal nerve fiber axons around the optic nerve head. The local distribution of the corresponding retardation values showed two maxima that coincided with the areas of the thickest retinal nerve fiber layer. These results support the hypothesis that the thickness of the form birefringent retinal nerve fiber layer can be assessed by ellipsometric methods.

© 1992 Optical Society of America

Full Article  |  PDF Article
More Like This
Exploration of the retinal nerve fiber layer thickness by measurement of the linear dichroism

Olivier Karim Naoun, Valérie Louis Dorr, Paul Allé, Jean-Christophe Sablon, and Anne-Marie Benoit
Appl. Opt. 44(33) 7074-7082 (2005)

Linear dichroism of the retinal nerve fiber layer expressed with Mueller matrices

A. M. Benoit, K. Naoun, V. Louis-Dorr, L. Mala, and A. Raspiller
Appl. Opt. 40(4) 565-569 (2001)

In vivo depth-resolved birefringence measurements of the human retinal nerve fiber layer by polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography

Barry Cense, Teresa C. Chen, B. Hyle Park, Mark C. Pierce, and Johannes F. de Boer
Opt. Lett. 27(18) 1610-1612 (2002)

Cited By

You do not have subscription access to this journal. Cited by links are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an Optica member, or as an authorized user of your institution.

Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Login to access Optica Member Subscription

Figures (7)

You do not have subscription access to this journal. Figure files are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an Optica member, or as an authorized user of your institution.

Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Login to access Optica Member Subscription

Equations (7)

You do not have subscription access to this journal. Equations are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an Optica member, or as an authorized user of your institution.

Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Login to access Optica Member Subscription

Select as filters


Select Topics Cancel
© Copyright 2024 | Optica Publishing Group. All Rights Reserved