Next-generation ophthalmoscope to spot signs of disease

To this end, Stephen A. Burns, a professor at Indiana University’s School of Optometry, has been named a principal investigator on a three-year, $4.8m award from the US NIH Venture Program Oculomics Initiative.

“This research is about using the eye as a window on health,” Burns said in a statement. “We want to give health care providers the clearest view they can hope to get into the body, non-invasively.”

Additional researchers on the project include co-principal investigator Amani Fawzi of Northwestern University and co-investigators Alfredo Dubra of Stanford University and Toco Y. P. Chui of the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai Hospital.

Burns’ research on using the eye to detect disease goes back to the early 2000s, when he and colleagues at the IU School of Optometry pioneered applying adaptive optics scanning laser systems to the observation of the human eye.

Using the technology developed at the school, the ophthalmoscope in Burns’ lab can observe the back of the human eye at the resolution of two microns, which is a scale small enough to show the real-time movement of red blood cells inside the eye’s arteries and veins. To date, Burns has used the technology to identify biomarkers for diabetes and hypertension in the walls of the eye’s blood vessels.