Two Different Worlds

I thought we could share a little more about what we do all day long--look at eyeballs. Some may be interested in knowing a little more about what goes on inside their eyes and we'll try to help out. Everyone knows what the outside of the eye looks like. This is a view through our slit-lamp (microscope):

Most people probably don't realize what the inside of the eye looks like though. If you had the equipment to look through that black little pupil, this is what you would see:

Pretty cool, huh? We call this the fundus: the base or the part furthest from the opening of a hollow organ, such as our eye. I'll give you the quick virtual tour. Everything orange that you see is the retina. The retina is a thin layer of nervous tissue that covers most of the inside of our eye up to the back of the iris. The area we use for our central detailed vision is called the macula, and it is located right in the center and has a slightly darker pigmentation compared to the rest of the retina. There are many highly specialized cells that collect the light that enters our eye and then sends the info on to our brains for processing. The small, round yellowish/salmon color thing is the optic nerve. This collects all the visual signals from the retina and exits the back of the eye and goes to the brain. The blood vessels are the other prominent feature. They enter the eye through the optic nerve and then branch out across the retina. You can tell the difference between the arteries and veins by their size: the veins have a slightly larger caliber and look a little darker than the artery running next to it. This is the only place in the human body that you can view the blood vessels in their natural state (no cutting/dissecting needed).

If people are grossed out let us know and we won't put any more photos up. Or if you're interested we see lots of cool stuff that we take pictures of that we could put on here. It could be a new series: "When the Eye Goes Bad...." (Que creepy voice-over guy).