They say that “the eye is the window to the soul,” but what I didn’t know until talking to Arjun Dirghangi the other day was that it’s also the window to the body. One of the only organs doctors can fully examine while the patient is living, the eye can clue us in about the progress of a whole host of conditions—both life-threatening and not.
When it comes to recording what they’re seeing in people’s eyes, though, doctors have somewhat limited options for putting that information into electronic systems (which is, by the way, required by law). They can either use what’s called a fundus camera—an extremely expensive, clunky machine that needs its own technicians to operate it—or they can draw what they’re seeing by hand. Unsurprisingly, many opt for the latter, despite the fact that doctors are rather notoriously not artists.
Enter the fundus photography alternative being developed by Dirghangi, an MD and assistant professor at UVa with a background in public health. Dirghangi, who’s spent years working and researching in developing countries, comes to the i.Lab as a result of a rather winding path, but with a mission of literally restoring sight to the blind.
“Most people are really happy when you can prevent them from going blind or reverse blindness,” he told me, explaining the story of how he ended up in med school and discovered how much he enjoyed caring for patients.
Dirghangi, who initially worked in public health both here in the U.S. and in India, says he made the “crazy decision” to go to medical school midlife after he “reached a glass ceiling not having an MD” in his field. Because he loved the field and wanted to advance, he returned to school, and it was in his residency that he first had the idea to develop an alternative to fundus photography. “Sometimes when you start something new, that’s the best time to innovate,” he said, explaining the benefit of seeing standard practice with the fresh eyes of a newcomer (or in his case, a resident).
His first attempt, a jerry-rigged “webcam” hooked up to a wireless transmitter, wasn’t truly usable, but it sparked an idea that remained with him for years. Later, after teaching clinical skills in Haiti, he reencountered the need to record and transmit retina data across long distances, but had no way of taking the images. “That was when I remembered that thing I’d invented five years ago.”
After returning to the States for specialty training, he got buried in the work of American clinical practice, and could have left the idea behind—but didn’t. His girlfriend, Carly, told him about the i.Lab when he’d reached a particularly difficult place with the American medical system, and it was at that point that he decided to apply.
“I was like a frog in a well … that’s the Indian expression,” he told me, explaining that a frog in a well only sees a tiny slice of sky, and can fall into thinking its universe is contained in the well, when there’s a whole world outside of it. Jumping out of the well, for him, consisted of applying to the i.Lab and running with his idea—something ultimately good for the world, that also happened to be good for him to pursue.
He said he's particularly grateful for the ways the i.Lab has connected him to mentors, new contacts, and things happening in other divisions of the UVa ecosystem; that this has been the escape from the well that's brought new insight to his imagination. And in this way, there's a lot of vision--literal and otherwise--to be shared.
