Correcting for miniature eye movements in high resolution scanning laser ophthalmoscopy

The newest generation of confocal scanning laser ophthalmoscopes with adaptive optics correction of ocular aberrations provides retinal images of unprecedented resolution, allowing for real-time imaging of photoreceptors in the living human eye. Natural fixational eye movements made by the subject/patient during recording produce distortions that are unique in each frame. Correction for these distortions is necessary before multiple frames can be added together to achieve noise reduction or to build a mosaic image from different retinal areas. Here we describe the characteristics of fixational eye movements and the distortions they produce during retinal imaging, we show examples of images with particular distortions, and show eye movement records obtained during the correction of these distortions.