EURETINA 2024: Ultra widefield OCT and the benefits of improved imaging

Srinivas R. Sadda, MD, spoke about the EURETINA meeting, his presentation on ultra widefield imaging, and the value of the international community of retina clinicians connecting in person at meetings. The interview took place at the EURETINA 2024 meeting held in Barcelona, Spain, on September 19-22, 2024.

Video Transcript:

Editor's note: The below transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Srinivas R. Sadda, MD: Hi, I'm Srinivas Sadda. I'm professor of ophthalmology at the Doheny Eye Institute of UCLA in Pasadena, California. Yeah, we just had a great symposium on the latest advances in ultra widefield imaging. What's really exciting about ultra widefield imaging, I think, is the fact that it really is in some ways a great supplement and maybe even a replacement to some extent of ophthalmoscopy. So one of the things the analogies I like to make, and I made this point in my talk as well, is that OCT really transformed our field of Ophthalmology.

So OCT, in many ways, replaced, if you look at the combination of color photography and OCT, in many ways, replaced the sort of slit lamp microscopy or examination of the retina macula in that way. I look at ultra widefield imaging, color imaging plus peripheral OCT the same way. It's really a great supplement and perhaps a replacement for ophthalmoscopy. In many ways, can be superior. In my talk in particular, I focused on on advances in color imaging of ultra widefield imaging, in particularly the addition of the blue wave lamp to the traditional ultra widefield image, which actually now allows us to produce an image, or achieve an image that is more naturally occurring. It really looks like what it looks like when you look at the patient. If we use these technologies not only to diagnose, but also to document. I think that's a huge step forward. Yeah, it's been, this has been a great meeting. It's probably been one of the best attended EURETINAs ever, and so it's really exciting. It involves a lot of sessions, and the rooms have been really full. The audience is very engaged. That's always great. But one of the best parts of a meeting like EURETINA is obviously seeing friends and colleagues and sparking new collaborations. I think that's one of the greatest things about actually having a meeting and actually being in-person. That's where I don't think these hybrid or virtual meetings are a substitute.

And so one of the things that I was super excited about this meeting and, not trying to be self serving and talking about something about that I presented on, but we presented the first results from the RIMR AMD Consortium, which is an imaging consortium, basically where we are getting big centers and small centers as well around the world to essentially share data for a pool of analysis. So nobody can download the data, but we're just analyzing the data together, in order to better understand the progression of AMD and also how it varies across the globe, which is pretty important when we're talking about new global therapies. And so that was really, was really exciting. It was, is, the first time we ever shared, publicly, any results. The consortium has sort of been moving along in the in the background, but it's actually come to that critical point now where we actually are generating results. So that, for me, was a super exciting moment, because it represented the culmination of probably 5 or 6 years worth of effort.

Coming to a meeting like this. It's all about learning about what the latest advances are. And we all want to get a perception of, "where is our field headed?" And I think you can get that by attending the talks and lectures and other things here. And so, you know, one of the, I think, exciting areas, this is one of many I don't need to highlight just one, is obviously all the new imaging technologies, the new capabilities we have, getting down to functional imaging of the retina, detailed imaging down to individual cells.

I mean, that's all great, but it's also great that we have really impressive advances in therapeutics, for example, optogenetic therapies. I'll be talking about that as well at this meeting, and that's pretty exciting, because that's treating patients who already have vision loss, who are blind, essentially, in trying to restore vision. And I have to say, when I was training, and probably I would imagine many of the people here at this meeting, when they were training, never imagined that we'd be able to do that. And the fact the we are at that point is pretty exciting. So that, to me, is another great aspect.

You know, imaging has advanced so rapidly, and so it's hard to not imagine that it's been it's going to continue. I think we're going to have better and faster tools and more automated. So, I think that's one of the big innovations for the future. We do have OCT devices already that are pretty automated. Sometimes people call that robotic OCT, because of the fact that you just set the patient there, and it captures the data.

And I think that's what we can expect in the future, is that we'll have technologies that will collect all the information for us, maybe married to AI, I say maybe, but almost certainly, married to AI. The AI may even give us clues, and may make its own inference on what's going on. All of that data will be presented to us efficiently as the doctor treating the patient. So we can present the information to the patient in a very understandable manner, efficient manner, and also be able to, I think, you know, more efficiently take care of patients, overall. But I think ultimately, I think what we'll see is in the incorporation of these tools, it'll allow us as physicians to spend more time talking to our patients.

So instead of spending all of our time trying to collect data, entering things into the EMR, having these things done electronically, automatically for us, will allow us to actually spend more time doing the thing that's most important, where machines, at least presently, can't replace us, which is that real human-to-human interaction and taking care of patients. Meetings like this, I think, are very important. I think that we can only achieve great things and advances for our patients working together. And I think meetings like this really inspire collaboration.