Laser Eye Surgery & Imaging

I am a postdoctoral researcher under Professor Austin Roorda at UC Berkeley. My primary interest lies in adaptive optics (AO) and phase-resolved optical coherence tomography (OCT) for studying retinal signals in human eyes. The underlying interferometry principle, widely recognized for detecting gravitational waves in astrophysics, fuels our curiosity to identify subtle signal changes in the micro-world, particularly in the fields of vision science and ophthalmology.

My specific interested field is known as optoretinography (ORG). By employing these techniques along with a combined AOSLO eye tracking imaging setup, our research aims to investigate NANOMETER-scale changes in retinal signals LOCALIZED within a SINGLE-CELL level when exposed to eye motions, in an all-optical and non-invasive manner in human subjects. For this capability, I would like to simply call it single-cell optoretinography. Recently, we overcome eye movement limitations and demonstrate potential for single-cell imaging and single-spot optoretinography sensing (SCISSORS) in living human subjects. We were able to acquire ORGs in different scan modes with a level of flexibility and spatial control previously unattainable over an entire 5-second imaging session. The proposed single-cell optoretinography, or SCISSORS, potentially opens new doors for vision science and ophthalmology. 

One example is studying the physiological processes, neuronal wiring, or mapping in the human retina before neural signals reach the brain. Detection of neural activities, cell-cell interactions, dynamics, or connectivities has historically been limited to traditional microscopy techniques in ex vivo or in vitro cell cultrures or animal model studies; in the long term, we aim to push the boundaries of detecting these minute signals using the developed all-optical OCT/ORG systems in living human eyes.

My previous doctoral research at UC Irvine also centered on eye studies, specifically in the areas of eye surgeries and imaging:

We are pioneers on a global scale, investigating high-tech femtosecond lasers to push the boundaries of a completely non-invasive, non-incisional glaucoma treatment. Our proposed method is called femtosecond laser trabeculotomy (FLT), which eliminates the need to open the eye during surgery. 

To put it in perspective, one femtosecond is to one second what one second is to approximately 32 million years. This revolutionary technology, used in eye samples, results in no collateral tissue damage, as demonstrated by various high-resolution imaging modalities such as OCT, second harmonic generation microscopy, and histology imaging. Additionally, we utilize OCT imaging to evaluate the creation of FLT outflow channels in human cadaver eyes and determine the optimal pulse energy for the clinical translation of our innovative technology.

Our research interests, conducted under the supervision of Professor Tibor Juhasz, focus on:

1) FLT: a novel, non-invasive, non-incisional glaucoma treatment. (See more detail in the website of Vialase, a UC Irvine spin-off company based on our technique. They refer to this technology as FLigHT).

2) OCT dispersion compensation.

3) iridocorneal angle OCT imaging.

We are also interested in Meibomian Gland Dysfunction (MGD), a prevalent cause of dry eye, working with Professor James Jester to answer the following two fundamental questions:

1) What causes obstructive MGD? By modeling the meibum section through the terminal duct of the gland, we found that increased meibum viscosity, decreased duct diameter, and weakening of the eyelid pressure on the meibomian glands all show potential for dramatically affecting the secretion of meibum. Paper can be found here.

2) How to treat MGD? We proposed a novel method called selective photothermal ablation (SPA) for MGD treatment.  coming soon...