Evaluating a Multimedia-Based Tele-Ophthalmology System

In a conventional eye department of hospital, an optometrist samples the eyes of a patient with medical instruments (e.g. camera, ophthalmoscope), and then delivers the medical records to an ophthalmologist or eye expert for consulting the patient. This face-to-face mode suffers from some limitation such as locality and time. TeleOph allows a trained medical optometrist in a primary clinic to capture the eye images and videos of an patient. The acquired medical data is delivered to the hospital where an ophthalmologist will review the data collected and provide further consultation for the patient through a real-time secure channel established over a public Internet network. TeleOph is tested in two hospitals with 100 real eye patients. Based on the experiments, the accuracy of TeleOph is 100%. That is, TeleOphbased consultation gives the same diagnosis report as that a face-toface consultation does. In addition, TeleOph is user-friendly to both the patients and doctors based on the survey report.