Retinal imaging helps your optometrist to raised assess the health of your eye by using a high-decision camera to take a picture of the back of your eye. This image will show your retina, optic disk, and blood vessels. This may help your optometrist find sure eye or health conditions, which can assist prevent critical illness progression.
Retinal images will be compared side-by-side over time to monitor your eye health and detect subtle changes. They permit your doctor to elucidate therapy more thoroughly as you’ll be able to overview the images collectively, which ensures a sure level of precision to your routine eye exam.
Methods
Retinal imaging has repeatedly improved through consistent research and development over the years. There are a couple of completely different methods that your optometrist can use to examine your eye.
Optical Coherence Tomography
Fundus Photography
Angiography
Every approach has specific benefits to seeing certain points within the eye, so your optometrist will be able to recommend the very best for your particular situation.
Who Needs Retinal Imaging?
Incorporating retinal imaging into an eye exam could also be obligatory when you’ve got certain conditions.
Diabetes can damage blood vessels in your eyes, which can cause loss of sight if not managed.
Macular degeneration can occur with age, which causes sight to turn into blurry.
Glaucoma damages the optic nerve as a consequence of fluid buildup in the eye and may cause vision loss.
Throughout the Process
Your optometrist will dilate your pupils with specialised eye drops and scan your eyes with a laser. The images produced are uploaded to a computer so your doctor can analyze them closely. The entire process takes around 5 minutes.
In particular cases, if your optometrist suspects you’ve a type of macular degeneration, you could need a body-safe dye injected by IV to highlight blood vessels in your eye before the test. This can take up to 30 minutes.
After the Process
After having your pupils dilated, your vision will be blurry for about four hours. Following the test, you’ll must wear dark sunglasses as your eyes will be sensitive to light. Many patients can drive themselves house after dilation, however this can vary.
For those who had a macular degeneration test, refrain from wearing contact lenses for a couple of hours after the test to keep away from them getting stained by the dye.
Benefits and Risks of Retinal Imaging
Benefits
Retinal imaging allows your optometrist to see your eyes more carefully and precisely. With the images produced, your physician will be able to see early signs of eye diseases that they had been unable to detect before. Catching conditions before they will progress is important to avoid permanent side effects.
The retinal imaging test is fast and painless, and outcomes are seen almost immediately. Additionally, the images produced are stored and can simply be compared with future images.
Risks
There are not any threats to your eye or your general health when undergoing retinal imaging, however chances are you’ll expertise gentle discomfort during the test from having to keep your eye near the laser for upwards of 30 seconds.
The test itself may not pick up on bleeding, or issues on the outer edges of the retina. It is important to seek the advice of your optometrist when you suspect you could have any issues you’d like to have looked into.
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