Diabetes is a sight threatening illness if left untreated. Effects on the eyes often begin asymptomatically, so regular eye monitoring is necessary. Optomed has developed Aurora camera and Avenue system for automated diabetic retinopathy screening from fundus images.

The camera and the system were taken to three optical stores in Finland. The opticians did fundus imaging and the images were analyzed using the Avenue software to find retinal changes. The fundus images were also analyzed by an ophthalmologist. These two analyses were compared to each other. The optical stores also received a survey about the use of the camera and the software.

The knowledge basis consists of anatomy of the retina and diabetes as a disease. Eye effects of the diabetes and the screening principles of diabetes in Finland are also being covered. There is also a section about the use of Aurora camera and Avenue system and about the use of systems based on artificial intelligence in health care. The aim of the thesis was to provide information of the reliability of the camera and the software and to gather user feedback from optical stores.

The feedback survey which was sent to opticians was done by qualitative method. The responses were received from all three optical stores. The feedback from opticians was mainly positive. Some difficulties were faced with the image quality. The opticians had experienced that the use of the camera and Avenue system was easy to take as a part of daily basis of optician’s work.

There were not any diabetic retinopathy findings in any 85 pieces of fundus images taken with Aurora camera and analyzed either by Avenue software or by the ophthalmologist so the analyses were alike. The research could be rearranged by selecting patients who could presumably have retinal changes to make better comparison between the software and the ophthalmologist analysis.