Retinal vessel oximetry: toward absolute calibration

Accurately measuring the oxygen saturation of blood within retinal arteries and veins has proven to be a deceptively difficult task. Despite the excellent optical accessibility of the vessels and a wide range of reported instrumentation, we are unaware of any measurement technique that has proven to be calibrated across wide ranges of vessel diameter and fundus pigmentation. We present an overview of our retinal oximetry technique, present the results of an in vitro calibration experiment, and present preliminary human data.