Combining SLO and OCT technology.

A review is presented of the research on high resolution imaging of the eye which can provide a dual display of images with different depth resolutions. The review refers to the flying spot scanning concept, widely exploited in the confocal scanning laser ophthalmoscope and recently extended to optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging. For several reasons as presented in the paper, imaging with two different depth resolutions is useful and this has triggered the development of the dual en-face OCT--confocal imaging technology and of the OCT/Ophthalmoscope instrument. The dual acquisition and presentation can be performed either simultaneously (practised in the OCT/Ophthalmoscope) or sequentially. The sequential dual en-face OCT--confocal imaging technology can be implemented in different configurations and has specific applications. When the sequential switching is performed at the line rate of the raster frame, the display of the two images, OCT and confocal is quasi - simultaneous, in which case similar functionality is achieved to that of an OCT/Ophthalmoscope.