At the Center for Retina and Macular Disease, our physicians utilize the most advanced diagnostic equipment available to help diagnose conditions such as macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, retinal detachment, retinitis, uveitis, and ocular tumors. Our cutting-edge equipment includes:

Ultrasound

When it is impossible to view a patient's retina because the vitreous is so cloudy as to prevent light from passing through the eye effectively, the physician will employ ultrasonography to view the back of the eye. This painless test can often identify retinal detachments and tumors in the back of the eye when the actual disease process cannot be viewed directly.

Laser Photocoagulation

A laser is a powerful beam of light which, combined with ophthalmic equipment and lenses, can be focused on the retina. All lasers cause a certain amount of controlled damage in order to elicit the desired effect. Small bursts of the laser can be used to seal leaky blood vessels, destroy abnormal blood vessels, seal retinal tears, and destroy abnormal tissue in the back of the eye.

Laser treatment is performed in the office, and usually requires no anesthesia other than an eye drop. The procedure may take a few minutes, or can last up to half an hour, depending on the type of treatment needed. Most patients do not require a patch or medications following retinal laser, and can resume normal activities immediately.

Spectral Domain - Optical Coherence Tomography

The most common use of SD-OCT is in diagnosing and treating age-related macular degeneration. SD-OCT, sometimes called Fourier-domain or high-definition OCT, is faster, more detailed and more accurate than time domain OCT. SD-OCT is an improvement over conventional OCT because of its three-dimensional, high-speed, high-resolution capabilities, which offer a “virtual biopsy” of ocular structures.

SD-OCT devices have 65 times higher resolution than time domain OCT. In fact, instead of producing 400 A-scans per second, the SD-OCT captures a staggering 18,000 to 40,000 A-scans per second. Physicians get highly detailed images very quickly — often fast enough to be unaffected by a patient's movement or blink. According to our physicians, this makes the SD-OCT their preferred diagnostic tool.

Fundus Autofluorescence (FAF) Imaging

Fundus Autofluorescence (FAF) imaging, a fast and non-invasive technique developed over the last decade, utilizes fluorescent properties of lipofuscin to study the health and viability of the retinal pigment epithelium/photoreceptor complex. FAF is a means by which both the retina’s structure and metabolic changes can be assessed by the physician. FAF is used to identify retinal diseases such as Geographic Atrophy (typical of dry AMD), genetic disorders such as Stargardt disease and cone dystrophies, as well as detect retina detachments.

Ultra-Wide-Angle Fluorescein Angiography (UW-FA)

Fluorescein angiography (FA) is the process of obtaining images of blood vessels within and under the retina that the physician uses to determine how best to stop them from leaking. It involves injection of sodium Fluorescein into the systemic circulation, and then an angiogram is obtained by photographing the fluorescence emitted after illumination of the retina with blue light.

Ultra-Wide-Angle Fluorescein Angiography is another new tool for assessing the health of the retina. Standard Fundus cameras can visualize only about 10% of the retina, while UW-FA units can visualize over 80% of the retina in one viewing. Because UF-FA has such a wide field, the images are sharper than those of standard Fluorescein angiography.