Our Eyes (November 2002)
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The other day (as this is written in mid November, 2002) I had my annual eye exam, something I plan to do every year as long as I have nice VSP insurance from work. My optometrist is Dr. Schwaderer at Mountain View Optometry, and he is pretty good. On this visit they had a new toy, an Optos Optomap retinal imager.
This wondrous tool uses "lasers" to take digital pictures of the back of your eyes, which means that unless something strange shows up, you don't have to get your eyes dilated. Awesome! My insurance doesn't cover such a new procedure, but at $36 to regain the second half of my day, what a bargain.
Dr. Schwaderer nicely offered to e-mail me the photographs, so I thought they were interesting enough to put up.
Update! Holly went and got her eye exam today (this is written on New Year's Eve, 2002) and also took advantage of the Optomap. Her pictures are also included below.
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| A marvelously clear image of the back of my right eye. | The left eye, with some bad reflection from the laser. | Holly's right eye, with no reflection at all. | Holly's left eye. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
In the images above, the big yellow oval is the optic nerve. You can see the blood vessels branching out from it. For the first two images (my eyes), the entire perimeter of the optic nerve should be sharp, but I guess with nearsighted people like myself, it is common for the retina to stretch away from the optic nerve, causing the ragged edges on the sides. Holly's optic nerves look just perfect.
The big dark area in all the images with reddish streaks is the macula, the main part of the retina. There's not much visible detail there.
Yay for technology that makes life better!