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Looking deep into the eyes
Two key pieces of equipment dominate Dr. Yves Sauvé's laboratory at the University of Alberta. One is a fundus camera. This specialized low-power microscope has an attached camera that takes highly detailed photographs of the retina (the thin layer of cells at the back of the eye that responds to light). The camera in Dr. Sauvé's lab can take pictures of both animal and human eyes. He uses it to examine the anatomy of the retina.
But what the fundus camera can't do is assess function. "Just because the eye looks normal, that doesn't mean it is working correctly," says Dr. Sauvé. Take congenital stationary night blindness, for example. This is a condition in which people are born with a problem involving communication between nerve cells in the retina. The fundus camera would seldom find anything wrong with their eyes.
Enter the electroretinogram (ERG), which measures the response of the retina to a light stimulus. An electrode placed on the eye behind the lower eyelid records electrical activity. "The ERG is the central piece of my lab," says Dr. Sauvé. "This is a non-invasive test and can be used for animals and humans to detect very small dysfunctions in the rods [cells used for night vision] and cones [cells used for colour and daylight vision]. We can use the ERG to distinguish between problems with the rods and problems with the cones, as well as get insight as to how neural processing works in the retina. It's an amazing window into what is going on in the retina."
Dr. Yves Sauvé received an AHFMR Major Equipment Grant to purchase the fundus camera and ERG set-up.