Off-axis alignment based on optical three-dimension rendering for compact adaptive optics scanning laser ophthalmoscope

Adaptive optics(AO) compensates for aberration between light detector and imaging target, for example, air turbulence, misaligned optics, and eye lens. This technique, initially developed to improve the performance of astronomic imaging, is leading to advances in the ophthalmic imaging field through combination with various optical imaging systems. General hardware-based AO systems need additional optics and beam paths for adjusting the beam size at the deformable mirror(DM) as well as matching the image plane. Previous research has composed the system using spherical mirrors instead of the lens to reduce aberration. Additionally, previous papers have reported off-axis type AO imaging systems for eliminating astigmatism and more compact equipment than on-axis type. This study optimized an off-axis AO-region of the AO-scanning laser ophthalmoscope(SLO) through optical design by Opticstudio (R) and three-dimensional rendering by SOLIDWORKS (R). The rendering process, including virtual mounting, allows checking whether block or pass of the beam by optomechanics and providing relative coordinate of mounted optics. The verification method for checking the alignment of the system is the comparison between simulation and practical beam wavefront at a specific beam path.