Researchers to use NASA device to test for cataracts

Could it spot cataract-related proteins? His next step is not for the queasy. Ansari bought some calf eyes at a slaughterhouse and got his then-teenage daughter, now a doctor, to dissect the lenses in their kitchen. He stuck them in the refrigerator to test after the cold clouded them over.

When he warmed up the lenses and beamed his device, light scattering differed with the lens' changing opacity. It was time to ask eye specialists if the technique might allow usable alpha-crystallin measurement.

It took over a decade of laboratory and animal testing, but the result is a machine that does just that — by aiming Ansari's special laser at the lens for five seconds and then calculating light scattering.

What next? NASA and NIH researchers separately are planning to study if special formulations of antioxidants — nutrients that fight certain age-related tissue damage — can slow alpha-crystallin loss.

Ansari also plans to measure the impact of long-term space travel on astronauts' vision.

Already, Datiles has used the test to diagnose cataracts beginning in some patients whose doctors found no other reason for their worsening vision.

And at Hopkins, ophthalmologist Dr. Walter Stark is using it to help tell if some patients complaining that their LASIK surgery for nearsightedness is wearing off need more vision-sharpening surgery — or if they're really forming a cataract, which LASIK can't fix. Also, researchers are testing diabetics with a cataract-speeding eye disorder.

“This test does correlate significantly with cataract formation,” Stark says. “We think it has great potential.”

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