Michael and Kaylyn's Adventures

25 January 2004

Seeing Eye To Eye

Michael went to the eye doctor recently. Instead of dilating Michael's eyes, they had him use a new-fangled machine. Michael wriggled his face around until he was aligned just right with a lens in the machine, then the doctor punched a button and bzzzt! Two lasers scanned Michael's eye and took the picture below. (His other eye was scanned too, but we thought posting both pictures would be overkill.) This is somewhat of a false-color image. The red indicates what was picked up by one laser, which was focused on the front of Michael's eye, and the green indicates what was picked up by the other laser, which was focused on the back of Michael's eye (or vice versa, the doctor knows which but it doesn't matter for this discussion). The doctor can fairly accurately tell (by the variations in color) how far back in Michael's eye various things are. Michael's doctor was somewhat disappointed (but not really) that there wasn't anything in either picture to show Michael. His doctor was surprised, actually; as an eye becomes near-sighted it stretches into an oblong shape, and as it stretches it tears. These tears heal and leave behind scars. Michael is very near-sighted, so his doctor expected to see gobs of these tears. But there weren't any! "That's a good thing, right?" Yes, yes it is.