COMPARATIVE SCHEIMPFLUG MONITORING AND EVALUATION OF THE DENSITY OF THE EYE LENS OF PINK-EYED RCS RATS IN-VIVO WITH THE ZEISS SLC AND THE TOPCON SL-45

One of the major disadvantages of the previous software version for th e Zeiss SLC system was the inability to evaluate the lens density in a lbinotic eyes. This was due to the high background light scatter in th ese eyes causing a halo effect around them. The evaluation of SL-45 ne gatives with a microdensitometer allowed effective compensation of the background scatter by shifting the baseline to that shoulder of the d ensitogram that represents the border between background and cornea pe ak. Such a compensation was not possible with the previous software fo r the SLC system. To extend the versatility of the SLC system to the m easurement of unpigmented eyes and to increase its effectiveness, a ne w software has been designed. The application of this software has bee n tested with a set of affected and unaffected RCS rats that were subj ected to different periods of UV-B irradiation. The densitometric read ings obtained gave evidence that the new software allows sufficient co rrection of the densitogram to compensate for the high background scat ter of the original image. Taking into consideration the SLC system's immanent advantage of direct quality control of the image on the scree n, the new software has considerably increased the versatility of the Zeiss SLC system for experimental work with animals by allowing evalua tion of the lens density in pigmented and unpigmented eyes in a user-f riendly and efficient way.