Eye reveals brain health (Part 1)

The eyes are not only the windows of the soul, but can also help diagnose brain health. Thanks to ultrasound 'look' technology, experts identify and monitor tumor growth and neurodegenerative diseases.

Helen Danesh-Meyer, an eye surgeon at Auckland Medical University (New Zealand), said the brain connects to the eye with a optic nerve. So when the brain suffers from multiple sclerosis, paralysis or memory loss, cells along the nerve and retina are also damaged. In fact, visual impairment is one of the symptoms of neurodegenerative disease in humans.

Evidence of the relationship between optic nerve degeneration and neurological diseases has been discovered since the late 1980s, but there is no device to measure changes in the retina and gender Learning can't take advantage of that discovery.

The accuracy of ophthalmic devices has been improved in recent years. Scientists have invented a three-dimensional retina camera (capable of imaging papillae, laser nerve fibers) and a polarized laser scanner (using polarized lasers to measure thickness). of retinal nerve fiber layer).

Both devices are now widely used to treat glaucoma (also called glaucoma). This is a higher level of glaucoma than normal because the amount of fluid released is less than the amount of fluid produced, causing optic nerve damage leading to blindness.

In 2006, Helen Danesh-Meyer became one of the first scientists to use the devices to study neurodegenerative diseases by tracking neuronal disk. In a trial with 40 Alzheimer's patients and 50 healthy people, Helen found that people with the disease had a cup-shaped region in the optic nerve disk and the thickness of the nerve fibers in the disk became increasingly reduced.

After Helen's discovery, the researchers had more modern devices to detect abnormal changes in the optic nerve disk to monitor the progress of diseases such as Alzheimer's, paralysis, multiple sclerosis. But it is only when the retinal tomography device is available that a standard tool is available to treat glaucoma and vascular damage in diabetic retina.

Denise Valenti, an eye specialist at Boston University, said that when shooting the optic nerve disc, the device creates two-dimensional and three-dimensional images of tissue on the retina's surface. So experts can determine the information about the shape and thickness of the optic nerve. Even people can detect microscopic changes in the retina.

Retinal tomography machine helps doctors monitor the progress of neurodegenerative diseases at low cost. While magnetic resonance imaging has a high cost and the patient has to lie still for an hour or more, retinal tomography can be performed in a few minutes.

Helen said that people can use retinal tomography to monitor the effectiveness of the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases. 'Drugs that cure degenerative diseases have many side effects. So we need to know the unwanted effects as soon as possible . '