A mobile phone-based retinal camera for portable wide field imaging

Digital fundus imaging is used extensively in the diagnosis, monitoring and management of many retinal diseases. Access to fundus photography is often limited by patient morbidity, high equipment cost and shortage of trained personnel. Advancements in telemedicine methods and the development of portable fundus cameras have increased the accessibility of retinal imaging, but most of these approaches rely on separate computers for viewing and transmission of fundus images. We describe a novel portable handheld smartphone-based retinal camera capable of capturing high-quality, wide field fundus images. The use of the mobile phone platform creates a fully embedded system capable of acquisition, storage and analysis of fundus images that can be directly transmitted from the phone via the wireless telecommunication system for remote evaluation.