TILTING EYEBALLS AND DESIGN AWARDS

(Handheld Corneal Topography Device)

EyeSys Technologies (now EyeSys Vision) came to us with an interesting challenge: Reduce the size and power consumption of the electronics of their large table top Corneal analysis system to a point where it will all fit into a hand held unit. So we did. Shown above is the final product being marketed as the Vista Handheld corneal analysis system. All the custom electronics for this product were designed, developed, tested, manufactured, and delivered under an OEM supply agreement to the client.

The Vista unit takes a snapshot image of the human eye using a backlit concentric ring placedo. Analysis of the rings in the image is performed on the PC to generate a curvature or topography map of the eyeball. Such maps are useful for contact lens fittings and pre/post op eye surgeries. Unlike other such systems which are table top based, the Vista has a unique problem as a hand held device. It must warn the operator if the hand unit is being tilted too much out of the horizontal to prevent incorrect readings.

The Vista has a base unit connected to a PC through the parallel port and a hand unit which is connected to the base with a coiled telephone type cord. The base unit contains interface electronics and a video frame grabber. The hand unit contains a CCD camera, a laser position detector, an LCD video display, a placedo with EL backlight, video amplifiers, and a microcontroller for communication to the base unit. A semiconductor accelerometer is built into the hand unit and is used as a tilt sensor to ensure that eye readings are taken with the hand unit in a horizontal position. The Vista unit was chosen as a finalist in the Medical Design Excellence Awards program sponsored by Canon Communications and the Industrial Designers Society of America.