Apparatus for automated placement of scanned laser capsulorhexis incisions

A system for cataract surgery on an eye of a patient, comprising: a. a laser source configured to produce a treatment beam comprising a plurality of laser pulses; b. an integrated optical system comprising an Optical Coherence Tomographer (OCT) 5 coupled to a treatment laser delivery assembly such that the OCT and the treatment laser delivery assembly share at least one common optical element, the integrated optical system being configured to acquire image information pertinent to one or more targeted tissue structures and direct the treatment beam in a 3-dimensional pattern to cause breakdown in at least one of the targeted tissue structures; c. a patient support 10 configured to maintain the eye of the patient within a range of the optical system; and d. a controller operatively coupled to the laser source and integrated optical system, and configured to: 1) adjust the laser beam and treatment pattern based upon the image information, 2) operate the OCT to perform one or more A-scans of at least one anatomical structure of the eye at each of a plurality of XY locations, thereby obtaining 15 image information of a predetermined range of Z locations at each of the plurality of XY locations, 3) identify a plurality of candidate edge locations for the anatomical structure of the eye in the form of XYZ triples by identifying either a first non-zero pixel or a last non-zero pixel in each predetermined range of Z locations for each of the plurality of XY locations, and 4) fit a mathematical surface model to the candidate edge locations by 20 first fitting a first set of the candidate edge locations consisting only of those candidate edge locations which are located in a central region of the plurality of XY locations to the mathematical surface model by performing an iterative least-squares fit algorithm until a solution of the least square fit algorithm converges to produce a first set of fit candidate edge locations, and then adding a second set of the candidate edge locations located 25 outside the central region of the plurality of XY locations to the first set of fit candidate edge locations, and repeating the iterative least-squares fit algorithm to fit the combined first set of fit candidate edge locations and second set of candidate edge locations to the mathematical surface model, thereby identifying a boundary of the anatomical structure.