Area of expertise: Digital Health and Diagnostics
The second leading cause of blindness worldwide is glaucoma, a disease characterised by a slow, progressive damage to the nerve connecting the eye and brain, with consequent irreversible vision loss. Early detection and prompt treatment are key in limiting vision loss.
An alteration of the shape of the point where the nerve joins the eye, clearly visible when imaging the back of the eye, begins to occur before visual loss becomes perceptible. Such a change in shape is therefore an important indicator in early detection, and a useful indicator to monitor the effectiveness of treatment. Therefore, the mainstay to examine this shape is the expert examination of the back of the eye by trained professionals. This examination is, however, highly subjective, and many cases are missed. Objective methods exist, such as Optical Coherence Tomography, but they are still too expensive and complex for wide community use, especially in lower-resource settings.
The contribution of the EPSRC CDT in Medical Devices and Health Technologies
Given the prohibitive cost of devices for the quantitative 3D imaging of the back of the eye, the EPSRC CDT in Medical Devices and Health Technologies at the University of Strathclyde, in synergy with the Department of Biomedical Engineering, with external advisory support from NHS Forth Valley, has developed a simple, low-cost add-on to a slit lamp bio-microscope. Diagnostic tools such as these bio-microscopes are already present in all optometry practices around the world, and these combined with powerful computer vision technologies allows the creation of a 3D map of the region at the back of the eye useful for glaucoma detection. This technology, which has a cost and simplicity of use that will allow deployment both in low-income and high-income settings, has been demonstrated in the laboratory, and is currently being developed into a prototype for human testing, and transferred to industry through a follow-on EPSRC Impact Acceleration Award. Through this activity, the EPSRC CDT in Medical Devices and Health Technologies is:
- Creating new ideas, methods and technologies for eye imaging.
- Forming new partnerships with the NHS and industry.
- Ultimately, benefitting patients.
The study is now being developed into a device for human trials, with the view of making it available commercially in the future. Intellectual property protection is ongoing.
The success of the research will provide a new, powerful tool for eye imaging, ultimately enabling a step-change in improving treatment and management of glaucoma, globally.