Vision starts when light is captured by photoreceptors, specialized cells in the retina that set fundamental limits on what we can see and are unfortunately lost in many blinding diseases. While photoreceptors carry considerable clinical and scientific importance in ophthalmology and vision science, means to assess their function and health at the level of individual cells remain limited. Recent advances in adaptive optics optical coherence tomography (AO-OCT) imaging systems have enabled photoreceptor cells to be observed and tracked with unprecedented 3D resolution and sensitivity in the living human eye. This imaging capability has allowed the dynamics of these cells to be studied in exquisite detail, in particular nanoscale transients the cells generate after being stimulated by light. These changes have been found to carry fundamental information about the photoreceptor’s physiology. Here, I will describe the capability of AO-OCT to image, track, and quantify these miniscule cell dynamics and how these measurements are being used to study vision and to assess cell dysfunction and health in disease.
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