Smartphones Assist Diagnosis of Eye Diseases

For many years now, owners of smartphones have been able to do much more than make phone calls, send text messages, or surf the internet on their devices. More recently, smartphones have been growing in importance as personal health assistants and telemedicine enablers. The latest proof of this comes from a US research team that has developed a simple, low-cost technique for achieving excellent results with retinal (fundus) photography.

Fundus images are essential for diagnosing eye disease, but the cost of commercial fundus cameras means they are inaccessible to smaller ophthalmic practices and eye-care professionals in third-world countries. The new technique, developed by specialists from the Massachusetts Eye and Ear research centre, will make it possible to obtain excellent image quality in various settings through the use of a smartphone. According to senior author Shizuo Mukai, associate professor of ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School, fundus images taken in this way will improve in quality as smartphones are fitted with higher-resolution cameras, larger sensors, and better image stabilisation.

The technique, developed by Mukai and his colleagues, requires an iPhone 4 or iPhone 5, an app called Filmic pro, and a 20D lens. Although the images are clear without it, introducing a Koeppe lens to the 20D lens will increase the quality of the image. The researchers photographed the retinas of children under anaesthesia, as well as adults who were awake, achieving excellent results in both cases. Mukai pointed out that the technique was not only cheap, but also easy to learn; it took little time even for first-year ophthalmology students to master it.