A team of researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, has developed two inexpensive adapters that enable a smartphone to capture high-quality images of the front and back of the eye. The adapters can allow anyone with minimal training to take a picture of the eye and share it securely with other health practitioners or store it in the patient’s electronic record.
The researchers see this technology as an opportunity to increase access to eye care services as well as to improve the ability to remotely advise on patient care.
Standard equipment used to photograph the eye is expensive and requires extensive training to use properly. Primary care physicians and emergency department staff often lack this equipment, and although it is readily available in ophthalmologists’ offices, it is sparse in rural areas throughout the world.
Adapting smartphones for the eye, they say, has the potential to enhance the delivery of eye care, and to provide it in places where it’s less accessible, especially in the developing world where ophthalmologists are few and far between.
Smartphones not only have the camera resolution to supplement descriptions of injuries with a high-resolution photo, but also the data-transfer capability to upload that photo securely to the medical record in a matter of seconds.
“Using plastic caps, plastic spacers, LEDs, switches, universal mounts, macrolenses, and even a handful of Legos, the researchers were able to successfully image the front of the eye. Visualizing the inside lining of the retina took a bit more work because you need to focus light through the pupil to reach inside the eye, they said.
To optimize the view through a dilated pupil, they used optics theory to determine the perfect working distance and lighting conditions for a simple adapter that connects a conventional examination lens to a phone. Then they constructed computerized models of these “screwed-and-glued” prototypes to produce 3D-printed versions.
