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A smartphone device has been developed that diagnoses cataracts at an early stage
Last reviewed: 30.06.2025
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A smartphone attachment has been developed to detect cataracts at an early stage. The device is placed on the screen of a mobile device. A user familiar with the technology of its operation can give feedback to the program, which will determine the parameters of the lens clouding.
An optical attachment called Catra is used to convert visible light into a collimated (parallel) beam. The eye focuses these rays on the central area of the retina, and to the eye they appear as a fixed point.
If a person has cataracts, at a certain point in time - when the rays pass through the cloudy area - this point will begin to blur. Having undergone a short preliminary training, the patient lets you know when and how this happens, after which the program determines the location, size, shape and density of the cloudy area.
At the current stage of cataract treatment, such a volume of information is excessive: ophthalmologists visually determine the extent of the disease and decide whether to remove the lens, explains the head of the development team, Professor Ramesh Raskar from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). On the other hand, in the future, more advanced methods of therapy may appear that do not require surgical intervention, for which the above information will be useful.
In any case, Catra is considerably cheaper than eye examination equipment - even in its stationary version, which uses a dual LCD monitor for more thorough diagnostics. And because the system does not require the presence of a trained doctor, it can be used in poor countries where the number of people blinded by cataracts is very high.
In addition, and this is perhaps the most important thing, Catra allows detecting the disease at an early stage. And this was convincingly demonstrated by preliminary tests: in one of the 22 subjects, considered healthy several months before, the device detected cataracts. This was later confirmed by a traditional examination.
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