An improvement on binocular indirect ophthalmoscopy for diabetic retinopathy

Diabetic retinopathy is a growing cause of concern with rising obesity levels and for premature babies who if diagnosed with retinopathy of prematurity, are highly prone to blindness. For observations, a baby's head is held in place, the eyelids are pried open using a wire speculum and the eyeball is held to a side using McNamar's spoon, all this while the baby is in an incubator. For other older patients, there are two phases of observation: i) The patients undergo iris dilation for 30 to 45 minutes before observation by an ophthalmologist ii) The patients undergo the dilation process again for 20-30 minutes, for the Fundus Imaging process. The whole process is quite cumbersome for elderly patients. The Binocular Indirect Ophthalmoscope-Retinopathy (BIOR) targets this problem along with the retinal imaging of a premature baby. This paper describes the BIOR device, which integrates a camera with an ophthalmoscope to simultaneously capture images while the ophthalmologist observes a patient, these pictures are routed through a handheld display device to a mobile phone that segregates pictures by patient details. Other advantages associated to the use of BIOR include: Cheap (premeditated), elimination of the Fundus Camera (quite expensive), reducing the number of excruciating observations on babies while giving proof to possible sceptical parents and improving the time factor, most important for treatment of any disease. Resulting pictures although of a lower quality (360 p) due to the tight budget, are useful; confirmed by the collaborating Ophthalmologist. This is the first step towards a highly precise optical device and further scope of improvement has been mentioned at the end of this paper.