An early speaker was Dr Jean-Pierre Guillon from Perth’s Lions Eye Institute who is also in optometric private practice. Dr Guillon came to Perth via Moorfields Eye Hospital, the City University, London, Hydron Europe, and for a brief period, the CCLRU at the UNSW.He is perhaps best known for his development and realization of the Keeler Tearscope, a development that is most likely to lead to an encore with a more advanced photographic tear assessment device in the near future. His address was about the clinical examination of the lipid layer of the human tear film. He described the later as a multilayered structure. Clinically, the deeper within the tear film a probl lies, the more serious the probl is. The outer lipid layer itself is a dual-layered (bilayered) film some 15-160 nm thick consisting of a non-polar outer, and a polar inner, layer of intercalated proteins. Deeper is the thick aqueous layer that makes up the bulk of the film’s thickness. The base layer of the tear film, and the interface to the corneal epithelial cells, is the mucous layer. The optical complexity can be understood from a realization that the refractive index of the lipid layer is about 1.5, the aqueous 1.337, and the air of course is approximately 1.000. Visualizing the tear film can be achieved by a number of ways including a Tearscope. Often a videokeratoscope will show a tear film reflection that can suffice but the answer can be as simple and as cheap as a fluorescent or LED-based hand-held workshop light. An assessment of thin-film interference colours versus tear film thickness (e.g. blue: 180 nm, yellow: 90 nm, white:
UNSW named No. 1 in world for optometry research excellence
The UNSW School of Optometry & Vision Science has been recognised as the world's leading optometry school for research excellence,...
