Preliminary studies of rabbit corneal structure using laser beams

A new method for corneal structure investigation is reported. The light reflected form rabbit cornea is recorded by a video-camera so that the images of epithelium and endothelium are obtained. Because of the great magnification factor due to the corneal curvature, the characteristics of the cells can be directly visualized. The theoretical evaluation of the optical magnification fits reasonably well the experimental results for collimated laser beams; therefore in the future it will be possible to determine with a good accuracy the corneal cell dimensions. Corneal diagnosis based on this method is discussed.