  Effective and accurate in-vivo diagnosis of retinal pathologies requires high
performance imaging devices, combining a large field of view and the ability to
discriminate the ballistic signal from the diffuse background in order to
provide a highly contrasted image of the retinal structures. Here, we have
implemented the Partial-Field Illumination Ophthalmoscope, a patterned
illumination modality, integrated on a high pixel rate adaptive optics
full-field microscope. This non-invasive technique enables us to mitigate the
low signal-to-noise ratio, intrinsic of full-field ophthalmoscopes, by
partially illuminating the retina with complementary patterns to reconstruct a
wide field image. This new modality provides an image contrast spanning from
the full-field to the confocal contrast, depending on the pattern size. As a
result, it offers various trade-offs in terms of contrast and acquisition
speed, guiding the users towards the most efficient system for a particular
clinical application.
