Solid state vs fiber picosecond infrared lasers applied to two-photon vision tests

Development of new microperimetric tools dedicated for imaging of early functional changes in the retina may help in the monitoring of various ocular diseases progression e.g. Age-Related Macular Degeneration. Recently described two-photon vision may be applied to microperimetric devices. Many subjects with well-known disease history could be investigated with newly developed instrumentation that tests ability of human eye to perceive near infrared radiation. The main limitation of this new method is a very high cost of the femtosecond laser. Facing this problem, we try to replace the femtosecond laser with lower cost fiber-optic picosecond light source. To compare these two lasers, we constructed dedicated measurement system. We performed measurements of two-photon vision threshold on healthy subjects for two different light sources - sub picosecond Kerr mode-locking solid-state laser and fiber-based picosecond laser. Experiments were conducted for an open circle flickering stimulus with 0.5 deg. diameter, for retinal locations varying from 0 deg. to 5.8 deg., using 4-2-1 threshold strategy that is well-known from classical microperimetry. Values of obtained thresholds are only 5 times higher for the fiber laser than that obtained by using the femtosecond laser, while it was expected to be about over 16 times higher. This fact requires further investigations. Nevertheless, the idea of replacement of the latter laser by relatively cheap fiber-optic one in ophthalmic devices for two-photon vision studies seems to be potentially promising.