High-resolution imaging of the living human fovea: measurement of the intercenter cone distance by speckle interferometry

A high-resolution method that allows direct measurements of the intercenter cone distance in the living human fovea is proposed. The experimental technique is similar to that used in stellar speckle interferometry. It is based on the recording and posterior processing of coherent short-exposure images of a small area of the central fovea. By using this optical-digital procedure, we have obtained what are to our knowledge the first objective measurements in vivo of the cone spacing in the human fovea. The reconstruction of the whole spatial information of the cone mosaic would also be possible by further improvements of the technique by subsequent application of image-reconstruction algorithms.