In a new study from the University of Waterloo, researchers reported that a non-contact laser imaging system could help doctors diagnose and treat eye diseases that cause blindness much earlier than is now possible.
The new technology is designed to detect telltale signs of major blinding diseases in retinal blood and tissue that typically go unseen until it is too late.
With current testing methods, diseases such as age-related macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy and glaucoma—which have no symptoms in their early stages—are usually diagnosed only after the vision is irreversibly affected.
Patented technology at the core of the new system is known as photoacoustic remote sensing (PARS). It uses multicolored lasers to almost instantly image human tissue without touching it.
When used for eyes, the non-invasive, non-contact approach dramatically improves both patient comfort and the accuracy of test results.
The technology is also being applied by Haji Reza and researchers in his lab to provide microscopic analyses of breast, gastroenterological, skin and other cancerous tissues, and to enable real-time imaging to guide surgeons during the removal of brain tumors.
The team says PARS may move us beyond the current gold standard in ophthalmological imaging.
For the first time, not just in ophthalmology but in the entire medical field, diagnosis and treatment of disease could be made prior to structural change and functional loss.
The team is optimistic that their technology, by providing functional details of the eye such as oxygen saturation and oxygen metabolism, may be able to play a critical role in the early diagnosis and management of these blinding diseases.
If you care about eye diseases, please read studies about how COVID-19 can harm your eyes and findings of this drug could benefit older people with blinding eye disease.
For more information about eye health, please see recent studies about this brain pressure problem causes headache, eye diseases and results showing that vitamin D3, omega-3 fatty acids cannot prevent blinding eye disease in older people.
The study is published in Scientific Reports. One author of the study is Parsin Haji Reza.
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