IMPROVING THE TREATMENT OF RETINAL DISORDERS B Y SENDING MULTIPLE SPOTS OF LASER SIMULTANEOUSLY

Age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy are among major causes of blindness worldwide. Laser photocoagulation of certain positions in the affected retina is used to stop the progress of such disorders and prevent blindness. Unfortunately, the treatment procedure is done manually over many treatment sessions with about 50% failure rate. It is believed that these diseases will be completely managed if the treatment is done in one treatment session. Li this paper, we propose a new technique of retinal laser photocoagulation in one treatment session. The method is based on generating an arbitrary binary pattern representing the positions to be photocoagulated. This pattern can be sent to a two-dimensional array of laser sources to trigger certain sources accordingly. A focusing system is used to get a smaller size of the pattern that can be passed to the eye through the pupil. Thus, the pattern of laser beams could be flushed to the retina in one shot. The proposed system was tried with laser-sensitive sheets and meat slices as laser-absorbing targets. This experimental work indicated that the procedure is a promising solution that would increase the success rate of treatment.