Early detection of blinding eye disease could be as easy as scanning a barcode

A new optical device puts the power to detect eye disease in the palm of a hand. The tool—about the size of a hand-held video camera—scans a patient's entire retina in seconds and could aid primary care physicians in the early detection of a host of retinal diseases including diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma and macular degeneration. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) describe their new ophthalmic-screening instrument in a paper published today in the open-access journal Biomedical Optics Express, published by The Optical Society (OSA).

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