Gadgetory

if you've ever had an eye exam you've seen these devices I can see his retina now I can see his optic nerve his macula and in his retina to closely examine a patient's eye doctors use indirect ophthalmoscope s-- and slit-lamp instruments so it's an excellent device but it does not let you do is take pictures if he has some complex findings we spend a lot of time describing it in words and then the next person who sees the record has to take what I've written and then form a picture in their head it's an inefficient practice so a team of ophthalmologist at Stanford University came up with another solution involving their smartphones we developed an adapter called the I go adapter that we designed so that we can easily take photos of the front and back of the eye I go makes use of items and ophthalmologists likely already owns a condensing lens and an iPhone that also keeps costs low the early estimate is under $100 by comparison these instruments run thousands of dollars the lens is held in front of the phone at the intra start distance and it takes up at the center of the screen and now we're ready to take a picture of Alex's I can see here this is the optic nerve right in the middle or actually off to the side and then there are vessels that come off of it and then here is this macula this is what we call the posterior pole the inventors aren't claiming that I go replaces sophisticated medical equipment but it does offer a way to screen patients in places with limited healthcare facilities and we'd be able to figure out what's going on with the eye with these photos things like conjunctivitis corneal ulcers maybe some things like diabetic retinopathy hemorrhages in the back of the eye the ophthalmologists also developed software so images can be shared securely and privately with other physicians combined with the adapter the technology holds enormous potential you can make the diagnosis of diabetic retinopathy for instance very very easily on an image just like the ones that we can take and in doing that you can save literally the site of millions of people over the course of a several years the team's next step FDA approval for the I go to make that vision a reality in Palo Alto California I'm suma das cnet.com for CBS News