Dr. Shaohua Pi from Casey Eye Institute Awarded $68,700 Knights Templar Eye Foundation Grant for Retinopathy of Prematurity Research

Dr. Shaohua Pi from the Casey Eye Institute, Oregon Health & Science University was awarded a $68,700 grant for his research entitled: Imaging Retinal Vascular Pathologies in Retinopathy of Prematurity with Visible-Light Optical Coherence Tomography

Babies born before 31 weeks of gestation or less than 3 pounds are at a great danger of a blinding disease called retinopathy of prematurity (ROP). The disease damages retina, an organ sensing the light in our eyes. Doctors know that blood vessels in diseased retinas are different than that in healthy babies. They guess the difference is because of the abnormal oxygen environment in those retinas. However, due to lack of effective device to examine the retina in infants, doctors are not quite sure about if this is true and what is actually going on in ROP eyes.

Fortunately, they have recently developed an imaging system called visible light optical coherence tomography (vis-OCT). It is able to provide high quality retinal images on the anatomy and vessels, as well as to assess retinal oxygen environment in alive animals. They have previously used it to image the eyes in healthy mice and rats, and they want to test if vis-OCT can be used to clarify the doubts mentioned above.

To do that, they need to apply for support to create mice and rats with the ROP disease. Dr. Pi will then do our regular imaging and processing procedures on these animals. He will compare the results from ROP animals with that from healthy animals to check how ROP damages the retina. They will also calculate several indicators to evaluate the degree of difference in retina. The evidence and results will cast new insight of doctors’ clinic practice for ROP.