Synthesising Wider Field Images from Narrow-Field Retinal Video Acquired Using a Low-Cost Direct Ophthalmoscope (Arclight) Attached to a Smartphone

TL;DR

This paper presents an automatic method to generate wider, higher-quality retinal images from narrow-field videos captured with a low-cost smartphone-attached Arclight ophthalmoscope, enhancing retinal imaging accessibility.

Contribution

The study introduces the first fully automatic technique to synthesize wider retinal images from videos obtained with a low-cost, smartphone-mounted Arclight ophthalmoscope.

Findings

Successful synthesis of wider retinal images from narrow-field videos

Comparable image quality to traditional high-cost retinal cameras

Potential to improve retinal imaging in low-resource settings

Abstract

Access to low cost retinal imaging devices in low and middle income countries is limited, compromising progress in preventing needless blindness. The Arclight is a recently developed low-cost solar powered direct ophthalmoscope which can be attached to the camera of a smartphone to acquire retinal images and video. However, the acquired data is inherently limited by the optics of direct ophthalmoscopy, resulting in a narrow field of view with associated corneal reflections, limiting its usefulness. In this work we describe the first fully automatic method utilizing videos acquired using the Arclight attached to a mobile phone camera to create wider view, higher quality still images comparable with images obtained using much more expensive and bulky dedicated traditional retinal cameras.