Free app helps detect optical cancer
A new smartphone app can detect a symptom of a serious eye disease, simply by taking a happy picture.
The free app, White Eye Detector, scans the eyes of people in a photo – or the entire photo gallery – to see if any one is suffering from an optic cancer.
The flash on phones can unwittingly uncover white spots in people’s eyes, with the white reflex a sign there could be a white mass in the back of the eye.
Some parents have been able to detect the optic cancers in children in the early stages, simply by looking at family photos and spotting eerie white eyes.
The Hoarder family spotted the colour change in their child’s eye but couldn’t stop the deterioration which happened at a rapid rate.
Lorelle and Wade Hoarder’s two-year-old daughter lost her left eye and now has an artificial one in its place after suffering the deadly childhood cancer retinoblastoma.
“I just noticed looking at her that one of her eyes appeared to be a different colour,” Mrs Hoarder said.
“The pupil was cloudy as well. We knew then that something was seriously wrong with our daughter.”
Just 48 hours later, the little girl’s eye went from brown to black.
“If you don’t treat this cancer, it’s uniformly fatal,” Dr Michael Jones said.
