Snapshot hyperspectral retinal camera with the Image Mapping Spectrometer (IMS)

We present a snapshot hyperspectral retinal camera with the Image Mapping Spectrometer (IMS) for eye imaging applications. The resulting system is capable of simultaneously acquiring 48 spectral channel images in the range 470 nm–650 nm with frame rate at 5.2 fps. The spatial sampling of each measured spectral scene is 350 × 350 pixels. The advantages of this snapshot device are elimination of the eye motion artifacts and pixel misregistration problems in traditional scanning-based hyperspectral retinal cameras, and real-time imaging of oxygen saturation dynamics with sub-second temporal resolution. The spectral imaging performance is demonstrated in a human retinal imaging experiment in vivo. The absorption spectral signatures of oxy-hemoglobin and macular pigments were successfully acquired by using this device.