Image quality can be affected by various issues:
Condition of donor tissue, cause of death, death–to-preservation time, condition of epithelium, handling of tissue- recovery to observation by specular, etc.
Cornea not quite warmed up, thus metabolic pumping is not functioning well (VERY IMPORTANT ISSUE).
Angle of cornea against the incident of specular beam. When cornea sitting on the bottom of a vial, if scleral rim is not evenly dissected, one side of the cornea can be higher than the other. Thus the center of cornea where the incident of the light hits may not be flat, but in slope, then not all the specularly reflected light may not be collected in the camera. In this case, you may tilt Chamber Holder slightly so that brightest part of the cornea is flat against the incident of the light.
Quality of container used to see through cornea (Very important).
Quality of preservation medium, etc.
You can verify that the CellChekD optics are ok by viewing the grid in the calibration disk included in the accessory box. If the grid appears normal, then the cause of the fuzzy cornea image could be one of the points above.
Temperature Importance: Since the endothelial surface needs to be smooth for the light to reflect off it and back to the image sensor, the cells need to warm up for the metabolic function to start. This will cause the cells, which when cold are swollen and give the endothelial layer a bumpy surface, to de-swell, which will result in a smooth endothelial layer surface. There are numerous eye banks that use a temperature-controlled incubator to bring the cornea’s temperature up to around 32-34c. (See: Cold Storage - How to Improve Image Quality)
Konan Medical USA
Customer Service and Technical Support:
Available 6:30 AM–5:00 PM Mon-Fri Pacific Time
Phone: +1 (949) 576 – 2255