Quantification of retinal chromophores through autofluorescence imaging to identify precursors of age-related macular degeneration.

Agerelated macular degeneration is a common disease that impairs central vision. To better understand early disease progression, we quantified two families of retinal chromophores: macular pigments in retinal axons and rod photoreceptor rhodopsin, whose changes have been associated with age-related maculopathy progression. First, we introduced noninvasive multispectral fluorescence imaging of the human retina and quantified macular pigments from those multispectral image sets. Second, we modeled the brightening of the lipofuscin autofluorescence in confocal scanning laser ophthalmoscopy imaging sequences to map local rod rhodopsin density