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Portable Retina Imaging
Smartphone ophthalmoscope attachment enables patient services in atypical situations. Cheryl Guttman Krader reports
An innovative smartphone-based direct ophthalmoscope for optic nerve imaging can provide a low-cost and convenient option for enabling patient access to care in atypical settings, suggests a study conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The study compared acquisition time for images obtained using the D-EYE digital retinal camera attached to an iPhone 6 versus a standard ophthalmic imaging platform (Optos). A retrospective analysis of the study was presented at the ARVO 2021 virtual Annual Meeting.
Patients included in the study had visual acuity of 20/20 to 20/50 in at least one eye. Imaging was performed on 76 dilated eyes of 38 patients and 34 undilated eyes of 17 patients.
Imaging time for both devices was captured using internal timers and totalled for both eyes of each patient. For the dilated group, imaging time per patient averaged 14.32 seconds using the smartphone attachment and 99.11 seconds using the standard system. For the non-dilated group, the mean imaging time per patient was 26.94 seconds using the smartphone and 103.94 seconds with the Optos instrument. For both the dilated and nondilated situations, the difference in acquisition time favouring the smartphone technology was highly statistically significant.
Gloria Wu MD—Adjunct Clinical Instructor, Department of Ophthalmology, UC San Francisco School of Medicine, California, USA—told EuroTimes she began using the smartphone ophthalmoscope during the COVID-19 pandemic since patients were afraid to come into the office but were willing to be seen in the parking lot or sitting in their cars.
“While we are back to seeing patients in the office, I find the D-EYE attachment is excellent for bedside imaging of hospitalised patients as well as those in the office—whether these patients are in a wheelchair, had neck surgery, or immobilised for another reason,” she said.
Gloria Wu MD
physicians should be looking for ways to provide more portable services and enable telemedicine so patients can benefit from easy access to technology and care. These strategies will also help us meet the challenge of perfecting artificial intelligencebased care solutions.”
Dr Wu observed the D-EYE, introduced in 2014 and costs $400, only fits an iPhone 6 or 7, so she had to buy a refurbished iPhone 6 to use the ophthalmoscope.
“It took our technicians just an average of seven minutes to learn to use the device and would take an ophthalmologist just one or two minutes. Users need to have a steady hand, and then it provides very good quality video from which we can crop images,” she said.
Gloria Wu: gwu2550@gmail.com
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