The capability to provide accurate predictions of vision performance and ophthalmic diagnostics of healthy and diseased eyes is desired. If this computational capability existed, dramatic changes could result in ocular instrument design and development, ophthalmic medical education, and ocular telemedicine. Physics and mathematical models of the eye would then be used with computational methods to simulate and predict accurately ocular characteristics and responses. The paradigm of clinical trials could conceivably be revised to achieve faster deployment of diagnostic instrumentation if demographically representative ocular responses were confidently known at the outset of the development. Similar advances are possible in medical training if realistic diagnostic device behavior could be demonstrated for students using computed images of disease and conditions. Finally, opportunities in telemedicine and expert system-based diagnostic and referral decisions become possible and practical. The major obstacles to this capability are two-fold: 1) the absence of demographically specific characteristics of the ocular model of health and diseased eyes and 2) the verification that such a data-base of ocular characteristics can be used in computations to provide accurate predictions. This proposed effort is the initial step in addressing these problems. Development of an optically functional and analytical eye-model bank to represent a diversity of human eyes is proposed. The integrative eye bank embodies population-based ocular statistics and preserves the correlations between ocular parameters and patients'demographic features. Advanced ophthalmic technologies have enabled access to the """"""""fingerprints"""""""" of an eye with cornea topography, wavefront aberration, and ocular biometry. In the first half of this project, novel optical eye modeling techniques will be integrated with contemporary biometric and detailed clinic data to provide realistic and anatomically-accurate models including emmetropic, ammetropic, and diseased keratoconic eyes. During the latter 12 months, the eye bank applications will be demonstrated in (1) medical education, (2) patient consultation, and (3) virtual clinical trials for instrumentation.

Public Health Relevance

Physical, medical, and computational scientists will collaboratively establish an anatomically accurate digital optical eye bank of advanced clinical personalized data to represent both healthy and diseased eyes. Optical computations will be performed to demonstrate prospective applications for the prediction of patient vision and the simulation of ophthalmic biomedical instrument measurements for medical training and novel device construction.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Eye Institute (NEI)
Type
Exploratory/Developmental Grants (R21)
Project #
1R21EY018935-01A1
Application #
7739613
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZRG1-SBIB-Q (90))
Program Officer
Everett, Donald F
Project Start
2009-09-01
Project End
2011-08-31
Budget Start
2009-09-01
Budget End
2010-08-31
Support Year
1
Fiscal Year
2009
Total Cost
$187,500
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Tennessee Space Institute
Department
Type
Organized Research Units
DUNS #
085834182
City
Tullahoma
State
TN
Country
United States
Zip Code
37388
Chen, Ying-Ling; Shi, L; Lewis, J W L et al. (2012) Normal and diseased personal eye modeling using age-appropriate lens parameters. Opt Express 20:12498-507