Overview

We study the functional mechanisms by which retinal photoreceptors and their ensuing visual pathways mediate the most fundamental aspects of vision – e.g. fine spatial resolution, color, motion – and how these visual capacities are affected by blinding retinal diseases.

To achieve this, our research group works at a broad interface of biomedical engineering, neuroscience and ophthalmology to develop tools that enable the visualization of the structure and function of retinal cells at unprecedented spatiotemporal scales. The backbone of the methods pursued is a technology called adaptive optics – the same tool used by astronomers to peer at small objects in space. The eye’s optics – the cornea and lens – blur the light that falls on and scatters from the retina. The spatial scale of this blur far exceeds the size of a single photoreceptor and other major retinal cell types, ultimately preventing the stimulation and imaging of the retina at cellular resolutions.

Using adaptive optics, we can overcome the optical imperfections that exist in the human eye and gain access to the retina of living humans and animal models, much in the same manner that excised tissue has been routinely interrogated in biology and medicine ex vivo.  Most excitingly, the ability to noninvasively probe living retinal cells in diseased human eyes at high resolution opens the door to study highly sensitive biomarkers for early disease diagnosis, thoroughly monitor disease progression and determine the efficacy of existing and new treatments.