Space Technology Helps With Early Sight Loss Indication

Cardiff University scientists and engineers from the UK Astronomy Technology Centre (UK ATC) have been working jointly on the development of a Retinal Densitometer that would help with early detection of Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD). As the world’s most common form of sight loss, AMD affects vision when looking at something directly ahead, at another person, or when reading or watching television.

"AMD affects a small part of the retina at the back of the eye, the macula, which is used to see detail and colour. One of the earliest signs of AMD is a change in the way that the light sensitive pigments in the macula regenerate after exposure to light," said Dr Tom Margrain, School of Optometry and Vision Sciences, who leads the research alongside Dr Alison Binns.

"Working alongside engineers - more used to designing state of the art instruments for ground and space technology - we’ve been able to develop the Densitometer, which can assess this change by measuring, over time, the very small changes in the amount of light reflected by the retina after exposure to light," he added.

The Retinal Densitometer measures the way the eye "dark adapts" after exposure to a bright light. Early tests already carried out by the project team on ten patients with early stage AMD and 10 controls, have shown that the light changes on the macula can be measured with high accuracy and with a high ability to distinguish between affected and non-affected groups.

Dr Margrain continued: "The benefits to patients are potentially huge, but the benefit is not just societal, it is also economic. We may be living longer but this in turn increases the pressure on healthcare services. Our next steps will now be to get the densitometer ready for official clinical testing and then to take this through to full commercialisation. Ultimately our densitometer could be used in any optician’s clinic."

The project has been funded by the National Institute for Health Research’s Invention for Innovation (i4i) programme and also by STFC, through its Commercial Proof of Concept Fund and Futures Programme, which was responsible for initially identifying the need for, and setting up, the collaboration between Cardiff University and STFC.