Assessment of Age-Related Macular Degeneration in Beaver Dam Eye Study Subjects in a Nursing Home Setting Using a Portable "Point & Shoot" Retina Camera

Abstract

 

Purpose:

 

Many elderly patients remain home-bound or are residents in assisted living and nursing home facilities, with limited ability to travel to an ophthalmic clinic for exam. This study was conducted in order to determine the efficacy of using a low cost hand-held retinal camera to detect AMD in subjects in a home-bound or nursing home setting.

 

Methods:

 

A mydriatic portable retinal camera was built by integrating off-the-shelf optical components with a Panasonic G2 consumer camera. Fundus image composition, auto-exposure, auto-focus, and storage were handled by the built-in functions of the consumer camera. This "point & shoot" retinal camera was used to photograph 27 subjects aged 66 to 96 years. Subjects were photographed in a wheelchair or bed setting. All subjects were participants in the Beaver Dam Eye Study and use of this camera was approved by the University of Wisconsin IRB.

 

Results:

 

Gradable fundus images were obtained bilaterally on 22 of the 27 subjects, unilaterally on 3 subjects and in neither eye on 2 subjects. Of the 25 subjects with gradable fundus images in at least one eye, 16 subjects (64%) were found to have no signs of AMD, 9 subjects (36%) had positive AMD signs, of whom 55% had signs of early AMD and 45% had signs of late AMD. Ungradable images were most often due to cataract.

 

Conclusions:

 

Our findings show that Beaver Dam Eye Study participants who could not be imaged using traditional tabletop photography, could be photographed using a portable point and shoot camera. The image quality obtained with this camera produced a high percentage of gradable images. We believe that using a portable retinal camera is more than sufficient for detecting signs of AMD in a cohort of nursing or home bound subjects.  

 

Keywords: age-related macular degeneration • imaging/image analysis: clinical • retina