May 19, 2003
Eye exams made easier by technology.

A new digital scanner may revolutionize your next eye appointment. Dr. Dean Edell reports on a San Mateo eye doctor who is one of the first to offer this eye scanner that is starting to pop up around the Bay Area.

They say the eyes are the windows of the soulÖbut they're so much more. When doctors look in your eyes, they not only check for eye diseases, but also look for the first signs of other medical conditions including heart disease, diabetes and many neurological diseases.

In order to get a thorough view of the back of your eye, doctors put in a few drops to open your pupils. But these drugs take two to four hours to wear off, so it leaves your vision too fuzzy to drive or do much of any thing else.

Judy Ipswitch, Patient: "It takes several hours for them to get back to normal stages and so you are restricted from any reading, or most anything that you wanted to do."

Judy has a unique eye problem that requires her eyes to be dilated and checked regularly. Attorney Renee Berenson has a family history of eye problems but dislikes the inconvenience of her mandatory eye exams.

Renee Berenson, Patient: "I use a computer at work and am required to read, and I couldn't do any of those things for several hours so essentially an eye exam wastes an entire day."

An Optomap digital scanner may change all that. All a patient needs to do is position their eye in the opening of the machine. With a quick click, the machine takes a digital photo of the back of the eye.

Marcie Arnesty-Olian, O.D.: "It's a 200 hundred degree wide image of the retina, so we can see the central retina and the peripheral retina all in one glance."

Now Renee gets a close-up look at her eyes.

Marcie Arnesty-Olian, O.D.: "This is your optic nerve here, it looks very good. So this is Judy's retinaÖthis is the area of lattice degeneration.

And Judy's eye problem is easy to see on the Optomap as well.

Judy Ipswitch, Patient: "The ophthalmologist would scribble a picture of the lattice on paper. Now there is an actual documented picture."

Other conditions are clearly visible on the scanner; diabetic retinopathy, a large melanoma tumor, even this amazing picture of a detached retina are clearly visible. And these images can be stored or immediately transmitted over the Internet.

Marcie Arnesty-Olian: "We can email the image to retinal specialists, I think that's an improvement in overall health care management. I think this is going to revolutionize eye care."

There is a fee of $29 per patient, which is not usually covered by insurance, but it does save time and inconvenience.