Early Detection of Blinding Eye Disease may Involve Barcoding Scan

A new optical device could help detect blinding eye disease through catching early symptoms.

A hand-held video camera tool works to scan the patient's entire retina in just a few seconds and could aid in the primary care that physicians have in early detection of a host of retinal diseases, including diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma and muscular degeneration.

According to researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the device is the first hand-held technology to use similar tools that easily work to detect eye diseases.

While an ophthalmologist or optometrist might examine the patient in his or office normally to diagnose the problem using various instruments, few visit these specialists regularly. Yet this new device may be available outside a specialists office and help others to get the care they need.

"Hand-held instruments can enable screening a wider population outside the traditional points of care," said researcher James Fujimoto of MIT, according to a press release.

The instrument uses a technique known as optical coherence tomography (OCT) that the MIT group and collaborators helped to pioneer in the early 1990s, according to the release. The technology sends beams of infared light direcetly into the retina of the eye and echoes the light return to the instrument that uses interferometry measures to change time delay and magnitude of the returning echoes that reveal the cross sectional tissue structure of the retina.

The study authors tested two designs: one of which used a similar handheld video camera with a flat-screen display. The other was found to carry a device that acquires images that are comparable to the quality of conventional table-top OCT instruments used by ophthamologists.

As many may not be aware that they have eye diseases, this can be particularly important because screening technology helps prevent many eye diseases through early detection.

In the future, researchers hope that hand-held OCT technology can be used in many other medical specialties beyond opthamology.

"The hand-held platform allows the diagnosis or screening to be performed in a much wider range of settings," Fujimoto said, via the release. "Developing screening methods that are accessible to the larger population could significantly reduce unnecessary vision loss." 

More information regarding the study can be found via the journal Biomedical Optics Express.