Five degrees-of-freedom mechanical arm with remote center of motion (RCM) device for volumetric optical coherence tomography (OCT) retinal imaging

Elan Ahronovich; Jin-Hui Shen; Tegy J Vadakkan; Ratna Prasad; Karen M Joos; Nabil Simaan

doi:10.1364/BOE.505294

Five degrees-of-freedom mechanical arm with remote center of motion (RCM) device for volumetric optical coherence tomography (OCT) retinal imaging

Biomed Opt Express. 2024 Jan 29;15(2):1150-1162. doi: 10.1364/BOE.505294. eCollection 2024 Feb 1.

Authors

Elan Ahronovich¹, Jin-Hui Shen², Tegy J Vadakkan³, Ratna Prasad², Karen M Joos^{2

4}, Nabil Simaan^{1

5

6}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA.
² Vanderbilt Eye Institute, Vanderbilt University 2311 Pierce Avenue Nashville, TN 37232, USA.
³ Vanderbilt University Cell Imaging Shared Resources (CISR), Nashville, TN, USA.
⁴ Department of Biomedical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA.
⁵ Department of Computer Science, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA.
⁶ Department of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA.

Abstract

Handheld optical coherence tomography (HH-OCT) is gaining popularity for diagnosing retinal diseases in neonates (e.g. retinopathy of prematurity). Diagnosis accuracy is degraded by hand tremor and patient motion when using commercially available handheld retinal OCT probes. This work presents a low-cost arm designed to address ergonomic challenges of holding a commercial OCT probe and alleviating hand tremor. Experiments with a phantom eye show enhanced geometric uniformity and volumetric accuracy when obtaining OCT scans with our device compared to handheld imaging approaches. An in-vivo porcine volumetric image was also obtained with the mechanical arm demonstrating clinical deployability.