Many people don't show much concern in conducting tests for the eye because of the expense or the time it takes to see a specialist.
But these could be less of a problem as researcher have developed cheap adapters that let smart phone take high-quality pictures of the front and back of the eye. They claim its user-friendly after basic training and can be easily interpreted by experts.
‘Think Instagram
for the eye,’ said one of the developers, Robert Chang, who is assistant
professor of ophthalmology of Stanford University School of Medicine.They
believe their technology can increase access to eye-care services as
well as to improve doctors’ ability to advise on patient care remotely.Current equipment used to photograph the eye costs tens of thousands of dollars and requires extensive training to use properly. Some rural areas of the world do not have access to it at all.
So they started designing a pocket-sized adapter that makes the phone do most of the ‘heavy lifting’ and after several prototypes, found a combination of magnification and lighting elements that worked.
‘It took some time to figure out how to mount the lens and lighting elements to the phone in an efficient yet effective way,’ said Dr Myung, who built the prototypes with inexpensive parts including plastic caps and spacers, LEDs, switches, universal mounts, macro lenses and even a handful of Lego bricks.
