CAN DIGITIZED COLOR 35 MM TRANSPARENCIES BE USED TO DIAGNOSE DIABETIC-RETINOPATHY

Retinal photography is an adjunct to ophthalmoscopy in screening for d iabetic retinopathy (DR). Digital retinal cameras allow a retinal imag e to be displayed immediately on a high resolution video display monit or. We conducted a pilot study to investigate the agreement in retinop athy grading from digitized images in comparison to original colour tr ansparencies as 35 mm slides. One hundred and fifty macula-centred, 45 degrees, non-stereoscopic retinal images were digitized onto CD ROM b y Kodak at base resolution of 768 x 512 pixels. The anonymized images were displayed on a 17 '' monitor running Windows at 800 x 600 resolut ion in 64 000 colours (PC images) and graded in random order. Alternat ively the transparencies were graded on a Slider viewer. A quality con trol set were also graded with exact agreement in 93 % of cases (91 % (73/80) of PC images and 94 % (75/80) of slide images). Compared to co lour transparencies, 95 % (84/88) of sight threatening diabetic retino pathy (STDR) and 100 % (62/62) of non-STDR cases were diagnosed using the PC. One case of pre-proliferative DR and three cases of non-prolif erative DR were graded as non-STDR from the PC. There was good agreeme nt between PC displayed digitized retinal images and 35 mm colour tran sparencies. (C) 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.