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US 6,669,340 B2Granted
Alignment system for an ophthalmic instrument
AssigneeReichert, Inc.
InventorsChristopher J. Percival, Douglas H. Hoover
Life of this patent
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AssigneeReichert, Inc.
InventorsChristopher J. Percival, Douglas H. Hoover
Estimating the term…
An alignment system for an ophthalmic instrument comprises an optical axis along which an operator can directly view the patient's eye and the patient can fixate on a dark fixation target surrounded by a bright background that helps to illuminate the eye for operator viewing. A position detection system utilizing stored geometrical relationships determined by multiple regression during instrument calibration computes X-Y-Z alignment status of the instrument relative to a patient's eye based on local x-y position information from a pair of lateral detectors receiving corneally reflected light from a corresponding pair of lateral light sources. A heads-up display image is provided along an optical axis of the instrument for supplying instructive cues to an operator for moving the instrument to achieve alignment based on signal information from the position detection system, whereby the operator sees both a direct macro-image of the patient's eye and the display image. The alignment system is particularly suitable for use in hand-held ophthalmic instruments.
An alignment system for assisting an operator in aligning an ophthalmic instrument relative to an eye of a patient, said alignment system comprising:
In an ophthalmic instrument for enabling an operator to measure a parameter of an eye of a patient, said ophthalmic instrument having a measurement axis for alignment normal to a corneal pole of said eye and means for projecting a visible fixation target image along said measurement axis for viewing by said patient, the improvement comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.