Photorefraction System Screens for Vision Disorders

Space optics technology in the 1980s has been adapted to help children see more clearly. Collaborating with research ophthalmologists and optometrists, scientists Joe Kerr and the late John Richardson of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL, adapted optics technology for eye screening methods using a process called photorefraction. Photo - refraction consists of delivering a light beam into the eyes, where it bends in the ocular media, hits the retina, and then reflects as an image back to a camera. A series of refinements and formal clinical studies followed their highly successful initial tests in the 1980s.