The Lions Eye Institute is excited to announce that a cross-disciplinary team led by Professor Dao-Yi Yu AM has been awarded $438,000 by the Australian Research Council for their project “Advanced retinal pulse wave analyser: Unveiling vascular biophysics”.
| Professor Yu, a clinician scientist and head of the Physiology and Pharmacology Research Centre at the Lions Eye Institute, leads a team that includes Professor Bill Morgan AO, ophthalmologist and researcher at the Institute, alongside Professor Danail Obreschkow and Dr Anmar Abdul-Rahman from the University of Western Australia. |
 Professor Dao-Yi Yu AM |
The team’s goal is to non-invasively measure intracranial pressure — a key indicator across a wide range of health conditions — by using the eye as a window through the skull. Tiny pulsating blood vessels in the retina carry valuable physiological information, but extracting it is technically challenging: the videos are unstable and noisy, making accurate analysis difficult.
 Professor Bill Morgan AO |
The solution draws on an unlikely discipline. By applying Fourier analysis and image processing techniques developed for astrophysics by the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, the team will be able to develop advanced techniques to characterise retinal pulsations with far greater precision than was previously possible. |
The research has significant implications for diagnosing common eye diseases, and extends beyond ophthalmology. It may also help address Spaceflight-Associated Neuro-Ocular Syndrome — a vision impairment condition identified by NASA as one of the four major challenges facing astronauts on long-duration missions.
Congratulations to Professor Yu, Professor Morgan, and the full team on this outstanding achievement.
