I know two posts in one week? Yes that’s right kiddies I have written two posts in one week, enjoy. So I was reading up on how to do my nails with a Christmas theme recently… ok I wasn’t, but I did read my wife’s blog (http://justamberface.blogspot.com/) about it because she is a good writer. While I was looking at her page I noticed that she had a “about me” section on her blog page that included a short blip about herself and a link to click to see her full profile. In her profile, you get to learn a little about her and her email is included if any readers wanted to contact her and that sort of stuff. I didn’t realize this existed for the blog site we use when I started mine so I added a “about me” section on mine. I included a short blip about myself as well so new readers don’t have to fish through the old posts to see if they can find out something about me and my email address in my profile so anyone can contact me to ask a question, give me some razz, or whatever. Well in my profile portion I added that my occupation/job title is ophthalmic photographer.
Yea say that ten times fast. Ok try three times. Actually just try to say it once. Can’t? Don’t worry, neither can I without sounding like a robot. The worst is that I have to spell it from time to time. Try that without looking back at it two or three times. Any who, what my job entails is diagnostic testing of the eye, more specifically diagnostic imaging. No, I don’t do x-rays of the eyes or anything like an x-ray. The only way what I do is anything like x-ray is that it is diagnostic imaging of anatomy and that’s it. It’s like saying taking a picture of the outside of your hand with your phone is the same as doing an x-ray. So I use three main pieces of equipment that do multiple tests each.
My favorite is the fundus camera. All it is, a big fancy looking camera that is highly magnified with multiple filters to do different type of pictures of the outside and inside of the eye. You heard me right, the inside of the eye. You know when you go to the eye doctor and they put drops in your eyes? You become so light sensitive that when you leave you can’t see anything for a few hours and the every light is more blindingly bright than it has ever been? That’s when I take those pictures, when your pupils are dilated huge and you look like you’re on drugs. I use different filters to show different aspects of the different anatomy of the eye one test includes a dye that is injected through a vein in your arm and as the dye runs through the veins in your body and the back of the eye I snap photos using a blue flash. The dye is very similar to the stuff they use on CSI or any other forensic TV shows that is sprayed all over a crime scene then they use a black light and see all the blood. Actually it’s the same thing just a different strength. When the dye enters the veins in the back of the eye the initial pictures show this morbidly beautiful light show. I use the word “morbidly” because if you have nothing wrong with your eye (no disease) then the “light show” isn’t nearly as fantastic. 
The next test I like to do the most is ultrasound of the eye or area around the eye (orbit). Yes ultrasound, the same thing that a pregnant woman gets so she can see the baby while it is still in the belly. Except my instruments are smaller and the sound waves they emit don’t penetrate as deep as the prego versions. So the answer is no to the question, “if I was pregnant can you scan my belly and see my baby?” We can look at everything from the very front (cornea), through the middle portions, black hole in the center (pupil) and colored part (iris), to the very back (retina and choroid) and even past into the muscles behind the eye.
The third piece of equipment is called optical coherence tomographer or OCT for short. Easiest way to described what is does is that it conducts a laser scan of the back part of the inside of the eye or as you learned above, the retina. When I say laser I don’t mean “rule the world write my name on the moon using a laser gun” laser more of just using a scanner on your eye laser. It’s kind of like in the movies when the character has to look into an eyepiece and a laser scans their eye and the door unlocks. So that’s what I do in a nut shell and 700 words.
All pictures are just example of what I do but I didn’t take these because that’s HIPPA violation. I found these on the internet without labels.
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