Diseases of the eye such as diabetic retinopathy (DR) and neovascular and non-neovascular Age-related Macular Degeneration (wet and dry AMD) are some of the leading causes of blindness globally. Diseases such as these manifest in the retina and can be diagnosed and studied with retinal imaging.
The FDA approval in 1999 of the Optos Optomap Panoramic 200A, the first system to allow capture of up to 200⁰ of the retina in a single image capture has been an important development in retinal imaging.
The term ultra-widefield (UWF) imaging was defined in 2018 by the Diabetic Retinopathy Clinical Research Network (DRCR.net) as imaging that can image 80% of the retinal surface. As UWF imaging technology has advanced, an ever-increasing portion of the peripheral retina can be examined, and important discoveries have been made regarding the diagnosis of and treatments for many ophthalmic diseases.