DoCEG: Visit 3 complete!

♫ It’s the most wonderful time of the year ♫ ... when we revisit the fantastic students at Hatch Ride School to gather data on the Dynamics of Childhood Eye Growth (DoCEG)! We were delighted to see some familiar faces and to meet our new cohort from Reception. We have now completed three study visits and measure the eyes of more than 180 children!

A child being measured using the Imagine Eyes rtx1 system

A child being measured using the Lenstar

A child with his prizes!

During these visits, we’ve:

• measured height and weight

• measured the cornea, lens, and overall eye length

• taken detailed pictures of the retina (the back of the eye).

What have we found so far?

We are already starting to see differences in eye growth in as little as six months! The graph below shows how the eye is getting longer (on average) in different year groups with different levels of short/long-sightedness.

The graph to the left shows that girls (pink) tend to have shorter eyes than boys (blue). It also shows that children who spend more time outdoors tend to have shorter eyes than those who spend more time indoors.

Our second visit, during the summer, saw some changes. At this time, I was on maternity leave but used my "keeping in touch" days to enable the testing to continue as scheduled. This time, I was joined by Bekky Bond, who I am delighted to say has now joined the Mynamics team full-time!

We took photos of the retina using the Imagine Eyes rtx1 system (see below). These photos let us see the vasculature (blood vessels), which look like tree branches in the picture, and supply blood to the retina. We can also see individual cells, called photoreceptors. The photoreceptors are the first step in the visual process, detecting the light that comes into the eye and sending signals to other cells in the retina, and eventually the brain. These show up as tiny bright spots.

During our third and most recent visit, we used the Heidelberg Spectralis OCT, which lets us see all the different layers of the retina – not just the photoreceptors, but also the other cells that process the signals from the photoreceptors. We will also be able to see the choroid, which is thought to play a role in eye growth.

What happens next?

Although we have a few months before we return to Hatch Ride for Visit 4, there will be no time to rest on our laurels... We now have the mammoth task of processing and analysing all the retinal imaging data to see if there are any correlations with the demographic and biometric data. We will also be kicking off our Axial Length in Colourblindness (ALiC) and Optic Flow as Protection Against Myopia (OFPAM) projects... exciting times ahead!