iCare News
Advanced Retinal Imaging Shows Progression In The Office
As a partner of a two-location practice in Northwest Ohio offering full-scope optometry, I rely heavily on imaging to manage a variety of my patients’ ocular conditions. Our patient base at Premier Vision Group presents with various chronic manifestations involving the anterior and posterior segments—from advanced dry eye disease and disorders requiring specialty contact lenses to epiretinal membranes, macular degeneration, and glaucoma.
To say that upgrading to the iCare EIDON® Ultra-Widefield (UWF) imaging system has helped my practice offer better patient care is a massive understatement. Transformative is the only way to describe how the system has impacted our offices. The iCare EIDON UWF’s ability to illuminate early signs of disease with a larger field of view has significantly increased our ability to document pathology. In the past, one of the most frustrating things for me clinically was to observe a finding in the peripheral retina that I couldn’t image. Now, the iCare EIDON UWF’s ability to capture findings far into the retinal periphery has given me a more effective way to diagnose and monitor disease, and educate patients about their conditions. Once we installed the iCare EIDON UWF in one of our locations, we realized it was so essential to delivering excellent care that we couldn’t practice in our other office without it, for numerous reasons. The first is the iCare EIDON UWF’s ease of use for technicians. Patients simply place their head in the headrest and chin in the chinrest, and with a one-touch button, the technician can acquire high-quality images. The second is advanced image acquisition even through small pupils, making imaging available to many patients. The third is a much larger field of view and images that are magnitudes clearer and more vivid than any other system we have encountered. The TrueColor Confocal Technology suppresses scattered light outside the focal plane and removes artifacts, yielding exceptionally sharp images even in patients with cataracts. Additionally, our iCare EIDON AF has assisted us in visualizing hyperfluorescent drusen in dry Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD) and in distinguishing buried optic nerve head drusen from swollen optic nerves, while its infrared capabilities have helped us evaluate clinical conditions such as choroidal nevi.
Far and away, the most profound way our iCare EIDON systems have impacted our practice is with the “flicker” feature, enabling comparison of images over time. Images are overlaid from different time points, and the software rapidly flickers the images back and forth, enabling a better view of subtle changes. We use flicker functionality to monitor diabetic retinopathy, epiretinal membranes, and geographic atrophy, as well as dry and wet (AMD), among other conditions. In the past, comparing side-by-side images across time felt like one of those games where you’re given two pictures and you have to find almost indiscernible differences. However, when the iCare EIDON UWF software flickers the precisely overlaid images back and forth, it’s remarkably easy to tell differences that might otherwise be overlooked.
This technology is so practice-altering that once we incorporated it, we forgot what it was like to practice eye care without it. The iCare flicker feature enables us to more accurately communicate with patients about the state of their disease and the importance of taking preventive measures.