Optical monitoring of the chorioretinal status during retinal laser thermotherapy

As a consequence of pigmentation inhomogeneities and/or different vascularizations of the retinal tissue, retinal laser thermo-treatments are often over- or underexposed. Our study is focused on the determination of suitable parameters to identify a convenient end-point of the laser treatment. The proposed method is based on the analysis of the temporal fluctuations of the scattered light intensity from the spot area. Motion of molecules and thus frequency of the scattered light fluctuations changes during the laser exposure due to variations of temperature, blood flow and optical parameters, i.e. absorption and scattering coefficient.