Seeing the eye like never before
Date:
September 10, 2020
Source:
University of Washington Health Sciences/UW Medicine
Summary:
In a big step for ophthalmology, scientists created a method
to view the inner workings of the eye and its diseases at the
cellular level.
Currently, researchers can only see a broad section of the
retina. This new technology allows them to zoom into just one part
of a cell. In their words, they have accelerated the process for
vision restoration.
FULL STORY ========================================================================== While there is no cure for blindness and macular degeneration, scientists
have accelerated the process to find a cure by visualizing the inner
workings of the eye and its diseases at the cellular level.
==========================================================================
In an effort led by UW Medicine, researchers successfully modified
the standard process of optical coherence tomography (OCT) to detect
minute changes in response to light in individual photoreceptors in the
living eye.
The results were published Sept. 9 in Science Advances.
"We have now accelerated the life cycle of vision restoration," said
lead author Vimal Prabhu Pandiyan, a ophthalmology researcher at the
University of Washington School of Medicine.
The study was funded in part by the National Eye Institute's Audacious
Goals Initiative, which embraces bold ideas in helping people to see
better.
The OCT modifications outlined in the study will help researchers who
want to test therapies such as stem cells or gene therapy to treat
retinal disease.
They now have the tools to zoom in on the retina to evaluate whether
the therapy is working.
Corresponding author Ramkumar Sabesan, a UW assistant research professor
of ophthalmology, said the only way to objectively measure the eye
currently is to look at a wide retinal area. Sabesan said researchers
currently can attach electrodes on the cornea but it captures a large
area with around 1 million cells. Now they are talking about nanometers,
or one billionth of a meter -- a small fraction of the size of a cell, providing orders of magnitude improvement.
"Since photoreceptors are the primary cells affected in retinal generation
and the target cells of many treatments, noninvasive visualization of
their physiology at high resolution is invaluable," the researchers wrote.
Cone photoreceptors are the building blocks of sight, capturing light
and funneling information to the other retinal neurons. They are a key ingredient in how we process images and patterns of light falling on
the retina.
Optical coherence tomography has been around since the 1990s. In this
study, researchers used OCT with adaptive optics, line-scanning and phase-resolved acquisition to deliver the concept of Thomas Young's interference to the human eye. With the ability to zoom in on the retina
at high speeds, they found that cone photoreceptors deform at the scale of nanometers when they first capture light and begin the process of seeing.
As Sabesan explained: "You can imagine a picture that looks visually
and structurally normal. But when we interrogate the inner working of
the retina at a cellular scale, we may detect a dysfunction sooner than
what other modalities can do. A doctor then can prescribe medication to intervene early or follow the time-course of its repair via gene therapy
or stem cell therapy in the future." "We will now have a way to see if
these therapies are acting in the way they should," Sabesan said.
========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by University_of_Washington_Health_Sciences/UW_Medicine.
Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Vimal Prabhu Pandiyan, Aiden Maloney-Bertelli, James
A. Kuchenbecker,
Kevin C. Boyle, Tong Ling, Zhijie Charles Chen, B. Hyle Park, Austin
Roorda, Daniel Palanker, Ramkumar Sabesan. The optoretinogram
reveals the primary steps of phototransduction in the living
human eye. Science Advances, 2020; 6 (37): eabc1124 DOI:
10.1126/sciadv.abc1124 ==========================================================================
Link to news story:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200910150249.htm
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