Sure I’ve been doing a lot of “crafting by night” lately…however, the “eyeballs by day” (i.e. my REAL job) has been keeping me rather busy as well! Photographing eyeballs, that is. So, I thought I’d share some of my favorite images from the last few months. Day in and day out, eyeball after eyeball, the beauty and complexity of the human body never ceases to amaze me.
I’ll start with a series of images during an iris fluorescein angiogram. This patient has neovascularization of the iris. Note the fan-like formation of blood vessels on the lower portion of the iris.
Here’s a close up of the iris neovascularization.
And here is a different external image, where the cornea has been stained with fluorescein topically, causing it to illuminate. You can see 5 small sutures on the top part of the cornea. Kind of looks like a creepy, zombie eyeball…which is why I love it…hehe…
Below is an early frame during a fluorescein angiogram – around 20 seconds after fluorescein dye was injected into the patients arm. You can see the retinal blood vessels are only partially filled. This patient has patches of atrophy in the pigmented layer of the retina, thus allowing you to see the blood vessel layer beneath, the choroid.
Here are two frames from this same angiogram, around 1 minutes time; the right eye and left eye respectively.
Next is a super highly magnified image of the foveal avascular zone, or central vision area, in a diabetic patient. There are areas where the small capillaries have died off, referred to as “capillary dropout.” This is due to poorly controlled blood sugars.
And another similar magnified image…I love the bizarre formation of those microscopic blood vessels. Again, the jagged looking vessels and lack of capillaries are from poorly controlled diabetes.
Below, color fundus images of the right eye and left eye respectively. This patient is a young boy who stared at the sun during the recent transit of Venus in early June. A photochemical reaction has essentially burned the retinal tissue, particularly the central vision area, or macula, of each eye.
Here is an image from the same patient, magnified and photographed with a green filter. Lesson learned: do not stare at the sun! Even on a triple dog dare!
Lastly, this series shows a macroaneurysm surrounded by a hemorrhage. It is a large bulge in one of the blood vessels. In the late frame of the angiogram (last photo), you can see the “light bulb effect” where the macroaneurysm is lit up and defined by the dye. This picture acts as a road map for the physician, showing him exactly where the source of the leak is!
I hope you find these images as fascinating as I do. I am lucky to have such an interesting career. In other photography news, I have been working on photographing a bunch of items for my new Etsy store. This whole Etsy thing is a lot of work! So far it’s been a lot of fun.
Have a great week! Til next time…
