Adapting SmartPhones for Ocular Diagnosis

From the 19th century until today, we have seen an almost tenfold increase in the ocular injury rate on the battlefield. Compounding this problem is that there are very few eye doctors deployed in field hospitals. With ocular injuries accounting for up to 32% of injuries in disaster scenarios, limited access to eye doctors is not just a military problem. A portable eye examination system is needed that can help trained medical personnel diagnose eye injuries either on site, or remotely via telemedicine if they are not deployed to a given field hospital. This system should be easy to use for an untrained medic but also capable enough so that an optometrist, ophthalmologist or ophthalmic surgeons would find it useful. To address this need, SA Photonics has developed the "Eye Phone" concept, a hybrid slitlamp /ophthalmoscope that clips on to a smart phone. In our Phase I effort, we completed the conceptual design of the system, including the optical, mechanical and electrical design. We also prototyped the ophthalmoscope as well as the slitlamp breadboards to prove out our concept. In our Phase II effort we will build EyePhone prototypes and conduct field testing to prove out their efficacy.