Let the trial commence!

Today I wasn't at work but Henry has been in a gymnastics display so I haven't been at home either and I've been itching to try out the loaned fundus camera.

So this evening I grabbed H and had a go. This is my first attempt. I'm used to a table-mounted fundus camera several times the size (and price) of this one (which is still 'sell-a-kidney' expensive).

Initial impressions are quite positive. There's less stability obviously, as both the hand-held camera *and* the subject are liable to movement. It was a little tricky to get everything in the right place and there's a slight problem with extraneous light, but I think these will be reasonably easily overcome with practice. I managed a reasonably sharp image on my wriggly, giggly eight-year-old victim anyway.

If you're interested: this is a right eye, eight-year old child. The large circle is the optic-nerve head and the vessels and nerve fibres radiate from this across the retina. The optic nerve head is the bit which becomes damaged in glaucoma. To the left of the nerve head is a small white spot. This is the macular reflex. It's nearly always very bright in a child. The macula is the bit which is damaged by macular degeneration, which is an age-related disease. The white 'wisps' above and below the optic disc are simply reflections from H's internal limiting retinal membrane, which is highly reflective in a child and much less so in adults.

The camera is a Volk Pictor hand-held model.

H wants to take the photo of his eye into school on Monday to gross out his teacher and classmates :-)

And mods...I can do nothing about the border. That's the way the image comes out of the camera. Eyes being essentially round objects and photographs being essentially rectangular...