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Part 2: the Arclight Device: frugal imaging for eyecare

In this three-part series (Click here for Part 1 and here for Part 3) Andrew Blaikie and his team explore the role and application of the Arclight Device in Imaging of the Eye. There are many different types of ophthalmic...

The lived experience of benign essential blepharospasm

Benign essential blepharospasm (BEB) is a rare neurological condition which causes involuntary sustained or intermittent muscular contraction of both eyelids and upper facial muscles which cause closure of eyelids, abnormal facial expressions and distress [1]. The term dystonia is an...

Primary eye health care in low- and middle-income countries

The need for eyecare services in low- and middle-income countries Recent global estimates (2020) suggest that there is more than a three-fold difference in the prevalence of all categories of visual loss (presenting visual acuity <6/12 in the better eye)...

Ophthalmology in Uzbekistan: Challenges and prospects

Uzbekistan is situated at the heart of Central Asia with a population of approximately 30 million people. Ophthalmology there has witnessed significant progress over the past few decades since its independence in 1991, reflecting Uzbekistan’s efforts to align its healthcare...

Sustainability in eyecare: Climate action in eyecare

Climate change will cause disruption to critical eyecare services and increases in rates of eye disease around the world. The International Agency for Prevention of Blindness has recommended 10 key areas of action on how the eyecare sector can address...

Initiatives in macular service provision

A report from Monitor in October 2015 identifies good practices that will realise most of the potential productivity gain in elective care available to NHS hospitals. These include: stratifying patients by risk and creating low-complexity pathways for lower-risk patients (tailoring...

COVID-19 and the eye: a review of ocular involvement and protective strategies

A lot of attention has been placed on the use of face coverings to limit COVID-19 transmission, but there has been less focus on ocular involvement and ocular protection strategies. The author reviews the literature and discusses possible solutions. The...

Large language models in ophthalmology

Traditional artificial intelligence (AI) models typically require large amounts of labelled data for training. For example, to develop a model capable of detecting macular pathologies on optical coherence tomography scans, thousands of scans would need to be manually labelled by...

Optical coherence tomography – reinventing the eye examination

It has been 25 years since Huang et al. presented the first optical coherence tomography (OCT) images in Science [1]. With vast improvements in OCT technology over the years, it is now possible to acquire high-resolution cross-sectional images of the...

Artificial intelligence in glaucoma: Assessing applications instead of technology

Much is said about the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to transform clinical practice, particularly with the advent of foundation models [1]. The newest models are ‘pretrained’ on text, image, tabular and other forms of data to produce architectures that...

Guide to Gaining Approval for a Clinical Study

This article focuses on gaining approval for clinical research involving NHS patients, although the principles can be applied to other types of research. The intention is to give an overview of the requirements for setting up a research study, but...