About Eye Vet Consults

Tele-ophthalmology resources are few and far between in veterinary medicine. Eye Vet Consults aims to help by providing clinical support to veterinarians in practice.

In many instances, your smartphone is capable of obtaining ocular images that provide valuable diagnostic information. We use veterinarian-generated smartphone images to:

  • Help veterinarians manage their own cases more effectively, or recommend referral

  • Provide recommendations for enhancing smartphone ocular imaging and thereby improving ocular examination confidence

  • Generate a same-day (or as late next business day) consultation report that provides diagnostic support, suggested treatment plans, and recommended follow-up

This consultation resource aims to improve access to specialty care, where distance or client finances may interfere with in-person referral to a veterinary ophthalmology practice.

About the founder

Hello! My name is Lucien Vallone (DVM DACVO) and I am excited to tell you a little more about myself and my passion for veterinary tele-ophthalmology.

One of my greatest professional joys is teaching. I see a great deal of beauty in the eye and I love to share this appreciation with veterinary students and veterinarians in practice as much as I can. Unfortunately, conventional methods of training don’t allow non-ophthalmologist examiners to easily appreciate the same level of detail that can be gleaned with a slit-lamp (or indirect ophthalmoscope) and the teaching experience is subsequently reduced to jargon-rich verbal descriptions of pathology.

Luckily, smartphone ocular imaging, aka smartphone ophthalmoscopy, has largely solved this problem. Just a few simple techniques - ideally used in conjunction with an inexpensive universal macro-lens - can allow anyone with a working smartphone camera to obtain highly magnified ocular images that are comparable to conventional gold-standard imaging devices.

I have been teaching these techniques for >5 years and have been thrilled to see how high-quality image acquisition enhances ophthalmic examination skill and confidence among veterinary students and veterinarians in practice alike. In short, we can now visualize and discuss the same structures, bridging the slit-lamp conceptual divide of old.

Read on to see smartphone imaging examples and to learn how to take diagnostic ocular images in your practice.