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IU optometrists to develop new glaucoma diagnostic, management tool
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The National Institutes of Health has awarded two optometry professors at Indiana University a $1.4 million grant to advance innovations for glaucoma treatment, according to a press release from the university.
William H. Swanson, PhD, FAAO, and Stephen A. Burns, FAAO, will utilize improvements made in their respective labs in an effort to develop more effective methods for the diagnosis and management of glaucoma.
As detailed in the release, Swanson's lab has made advances in neural modeling and visual psychophysics, while Burns' lab has made advances in retinal imaging.
By utilizing 3-D images of the nerve fiber layer to acquire high-resolution imaging data and assess ganglion cell loss, the professors believe they can determine the role of aging and disease on the retinal nerve fiber layer, according to the release.
“Our first step is to reduce spurious features produced in image acquisition by using a custom 3-D segmentation process,” Swanson said in the release. “The second step will be to produce images that encode angle and density of fibers by using steerable spatial filters to identify individual nerve fibers.
“Our goal is that the doctor will be able to take a picture of the back of the eye showing where the retinal nerve fiber layer structure is abnormal," he continued. "That image could then be used to guide the doctor to test corresponding locations with perimetry."