  Pulsatile changes in retinal vascular geometry over the cardiac cycle have
clinical implications for the diagnosis of ocular and systemic vascular
diseases, including ischemia, coronary heart diseases, and diabetes mellitus
and its complications. Thus, analysis of the pulsatile changes over the cardiac
cycle is a potential non-invasive assessment for the presence of ocular and
systemic vascular diseases. The cardiac rhythm influences these pulsatile
changes in the retina, is a result of the change in blood volumetric flow
entering the ophthalmic-vascular system under a certain level of intraocular
pressure during the peak systolic and diastolic phases of the cardiac cycle.
Assessment of fundus images generally requires ophthalmologic expertise.
However, the availability of an expert is not always guaranteed, and even if an
expert is available, the assessment is performed manually. Thus, there is also
a need for an automated device that can analyze the fundus images and keep
track of the pulsations. Such a device can be synchronized with the
Electrocardiogram and can be programmed to assess the presence of various
ocular and systemic vascular diseases. In this project, we proposed and worked
on a portable embedded system device that automatically captures retinal images
and analyzes them for the estimation of vessel diameters. The device is
hand-held and attaches to the ophthalmoscope as an extension. Using the device,
the time variation of the vessel diameters can be estimated, which can further
be used to predict ECG and the presence of various other systemic vascular
diseases.
