Retinoblastoma

Retinoblastoma constitutes a global disease that burdens many families all over the world. This book highlights the essential basic information needed by every ophthalmologist and covers all aspects of this tumor: history, genetics, epidemiology, clinical features, diagnosis, imaging, management, and prognosis. The book includes basic knowledge, but is also designed to discuss current treatment modalities showing improved survival compared to the past. A whole chapter is dedicated to histopathological features and the American Joint Commission on Cancer staging system, with the aim of having it internationally used in all countries to improve outcomes and for research purposes. Readers will find the book enjoyable, comprehensive, and easy to understand

Visual Impairment and Blindness

Blindness and vision impairment affect at least 2.2 billion people worldwide with most individuals having a preventable vision impairment. The majority of people with vision impairment are older than 50 years, however, vision loss can affect people of all ages. Reduced eyesight can have major and long-lasting effects on all aspects of life, including daily personal activities, interacting with the community, school and work opportunities, and the ability to access public services. This book provides an overview of the effects of blindness and visual impairment in the context of the most common causes of blindness in older adults as well as children, including retinal disorders, cataracts, glaucoma, and macular or corneal degeneration

Outcomes for posterior segment-involving uveitis: from heterogeneity to a core outcome set

Uveitis describes a group of diseases characterised by intraocular inflammation. Uveitis is the fifth commonest cause of visual loss in the developed world and accounts for about 10–15% of total blindness. Intermediate, posterior and panuveitis are the most critical forms of uveitis named as Posterior Segment-Involving Uveitis (PSIU). They often share common clinical features and higher risk of complications (e.g. uveitic macular oedema (UMO)), requiring additional treatment either systemic or local injection-based therapy. UMO describes the accumulation of fluids at the central part of the retina, known as the macula. It is the leading cause of sight-loss in PSIU affecting around one-third of patients. To date, there has been a lack of consensus guidelines over the treatment of UMO. Furthermore, trials include a range of heterogeneous outcomes which may lack relevance to key stakeholders (patients and carers) and means that it is challenging to compare results from trials and undertake evidence synthesis. The doctoral research forming my thesis aimed to: (i) assess the effectiveness of the available pharmacological therapies used in the treatment of UMO; (ii) develop an international consensus on a standardised set of outcomes using a multi methods approach to create a core outcome set (COS) for non-infectious PSI

Visual symptoms in Parkinson's disease and Parkinson's disease dementia

Non-motor symptoms such as dementia and visual hallucinations are key determinants of long-term outcome and quality of life in Parkinson’s disease (PD). Attempting to understand these issues better was the motivation behind this thesis. A major aim of the study was to characterise the visual symptoms experienced by patients with PD and PD dementia, focussing not just on complex visual hallucinations, whose prognostic implications are already well-described, but also on a range of other visual symptoms including illusory misperceptions, sensations of passage and presence and double vision. A major objective was to define key measures of visual exploration strategy during visuocognitive assessment and examine the link between strategy, cognition and visual and motor symptoms. We also set out to examine the utility of retina-specific visual assessment techniques to define the potential role of retinal dysfunction in visual impairment and symptomatology. A major finding of this study was that not all visual symptoms share a common pathophysiological basis. Our results argue in favour of splitting hallucinations into separate phenomenological groups in order to better define causation and predictive value in future longitudinal studies. In addition, exploration strategy on a variety of visual tasks was demonstrated to be significantly less efficient in subjects with perceptual difficulties, providing insight into the interaction between cognition and eye movements in PD. Retinal structure, as assessed by optical coherence tomography, was not significantly altered in PD and our results would caution against the use of this technique as a disease biomarker until more is known about the limitations of this method. Finally, our neurophysiological assessment hints at the retina as the site of diminished visual acuity in PD despite there being no striking differences in central and peripheral retinal responses between control and PD subjects.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceParkinson's UK : UK NIHR Biomedical Research Centre for Ageing and Age-Related Disease : Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation TrustGBUnited Kingdo

Technology 2002: the Third National Technology Transfer Conference and Exposition, Volume 1

The proceedings from the conference are presented. The topics covered include the following: computer technology, advanced manufacturing, materials science, biotechnology, and electronics

Handbook of Vascular Biometrics

This open access handbook provides the first comprehensive overview of biometrics exploiting the shape of human blood vessels for biometric recognition, i.e. vascular biometrics, including finger vein recognition, hand/palm vein recognition, retina recognition, and sclera recognition. After an introductory chapter summarizing the state of the art in and availability of commercial systems and open datasets/open source software, individual chapters focus on specific aspects of one of the biometric modalities, including questions of usability, security, and privacy. The book features contributions from both academia and major industrial manufacturers