Stem I is a class taught by Dr. Crowthers at Mass Academy. In A, B, and part of C term, students are asked to prepare an independent research project on a topic of their choosing. Throughout this project, students create technical documentation including a grant proposal, project proposal, and thesis. In addition to this, they keep track of their progress through project notes and a logbook.
OptiCare is a mobile application and complimentary novel technology that allows for the point of care diagnosis and suspect of glaucoma and cataracts. OptiCare aims to improve the accessibility of eye care for both of these diseases, and provides potential diagnostic methods that are tens of thousands of dollars cheaper than what is currently on the market.
2.2 billion people suffer from vision loss, and of these cases, at least 1 billion could have been prevented if access to eye care was available. In specific, two of the largest eye diseases are glaucoma, the buildup of intraocular pressure in the eye, and cataracts, the cloudiness of the eye’s lens. Cataracts cause 65.2 million cases of vision loss, yet 68 percent of cases remain undiagnosed, and glaucoma makes up 80 million cases of vision loss, with 50 percent of cases going undiagnosed. Due to a lack of diagnosis, both diseases are not caught early in most individuals and cause severe vision loss and even blindness. To combat vision loss, OptiCare aims to create a novel instrument and a complimentary mobile application to provide cheap, accurate, and accessible diagnostic methods for point-of-care use. First, the instruments to measure intraocular pressure, and produce fundus images will be created and tested to achieve optimal performance in the diagnosis of glaucoma and cataracts. Then, machine learning (ML) and mathematical models will be created to analyze the results of the different diagnostic tools. Finally, these models will be implemented into an app. Data analysis mainly focused on the performance of the ML models: the cataracts model achieved an accuracy of 87 percent, and the glaucoma model achieved an accuracy of 80 percent for the left eye and 86 percent for the right eye. The future steps of OptiCare include using instruments with higher sensitivity to produce more accurate results from the novel instrument measuring IOP.
2.2 billion people suffer from vision loss, and of these cases, at least 1 billion could have been prevented if access to eye care was available. In specific, two of the largest eye diseases are glaucoma and cataracts. Cataracts and glaucoma cause millions of cases of blindness and over 50% of both diseases go undiagnosed.
To combat vision loss, OptiCare aims to create a novel instrument and a complimentary mobile application to provide cheap, accurate, and accessible diagnostic methods for point-of-care use. OptiCare has the potential to save hundreds of millions fo individuals from severe vision loss, and even blindness.