Morphology of the normative human cone photoreceptor mosaic and a publicly available adaptive optics montage repository

Adaptive optics ophthalmoscopy has enabled visualization of the in vivo human photoreceptor mosaic in health, disease and its treatment. Despite this, the clinical utility of the imaging technology has been limited by a lack of automated analysis techniques capable of accurately quantifying photoreceptor structure and a lack of an available normative image database. Here, we present a fully automated algorithm for estimating cone spacing and density over a complete adaptive optics montage along with a database of normative images and cone densities. We imaged the cone mosaics surrounding the fovea and along the horizontal and vertical meridians of fifty normal-sighted controls with a custom-built, multimodal adaptive optics scanning light ophthalmoscope. Cone spacing was automatically measured in the frequency domain and spacing measurements were converted to estimates of cone density at all locations across the montage. Consistent with previous reports, cone density measurements were highest near fovea (152,906 ± 53,209 cones/mm²) and decreased exponentially with eccentricity. A 2.5-fold variation was found in cone density estimates at 0.1 mm, this variation decreased to 1.75-fold at 1 mm. We provide all images, mosaic quantifications, and automated software open source. This database will aid investigators in translating adaptive optics ophthalmoscopy to clinical applications.