Non-contact tonometer corneal monitoring system

Claim 1

A non-contact tonometer having a pneumatic system in which a fluid pulse is directed along a pneumatic axis and at a patient''s corneal surface, and a monitoring system in which the effect of said pulse on said surface is determined, said pneumatic system including a control means, an alignment system disposed relative to an alignment axis coincident with said pneumatic axis, said alignment system having a visual alignment mode and an invisible verification mode, said visual alignment mode including an objective lens and an observation means disposed along said alignment axis and projection means to project a visible target image through said objective lens along said alignment axis toward the focal plane thereof and toward said corneal surface, said target image being reflected by said corneal surface along said alignment axis to form a visible reflected image at said observation means, said invisible verification mode including a manual actuating means, a source of invisible verification radiation, means to project an image of said source along said alignment axis toward the focal plane thereof and toward said corneal surface, said invisible source image being reflected by said corneal surface along said alignment axis toward said observation means, a beam divider disposed along said alignment axis between said objective and said observation means to direct said invisible source image to a verification image plane, a detector sensitive to said invisible verification radiation at said verification image plane, said detector being operatively connected to the control means of said pneumatic system responsive to a reflected source image coincident thereon to actuate the control means of said pneumatic system, said tonometer being characterized by a monitoring system including: a monitoring source of invisible radiation and means to project the same along said alignment axis toward the focal plane thereof and toward said corneal surface, said monitoring source image being reflected by said corneal surface along said alignment axis toward said observation means, a beam splitter disposed along said alignment axis between the objective and said observation means to direct the image of the monitoring source to a monitoring image plane, and a detector at said monitoring image plane sensitive to changes in monitoring light flux incident thereon.