The overall objective this work is to contribute to the understanding of how the precise structure of the corneal stroma is achieved during development, and to apply this knowledge to the latest attempts at engineering effective stromal constructs for use in transplantation. The…
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The cochlea plays an important role in human hearing. Its basic function is to map sounds of different frequencies onto corresponding characteristic positions on the basilar membrane, BM. When sounds enter the fluid-filled cochlea, deflections of the BM occur due to pressure dif…
Cochlear implants have been shown to successfully restore hearing to the profoundly deaf. Despite this achievement, issues remain concerning the power consumption and the accuracy of stimulation. This thesis is mainly concerned with investigating the spread of stimulation voltag…
Chemotaxis and cell migration are important processes for life, involved in organism development and homeostasis and implicated in a number of disease states. Dictyostelium discoideum, an amoeba, is a useful model for investigation of chemotaxis and development, due to its abili…
It is estimated that there are millions of corneal operations performed annually in the United Kingdom and United States following pathology and/or acute injury. Equally, millions elect to have corneal refractive surgery to remedy visual disorders such has myopia, prespreopia, a…
Idiopathic intracranial hypertension (IIH) is common in obese women and can lead to significant visual impairment. The cause of IIH is unknown and management controversial, due to the lack of prospective trials. This thesis provides a comprehensive review of the aetiology and ma…
BACKGROUND: Mild hypoxia is well known to impair scotopic (night) vision while moderate to severe hypoxia is required to compromise photopic (day) vision. However, the severity of hypoxia required to affect mesopic (twilight) vision, when both rod and cone photoreceptors contrib…
Idiopathic intracranial hypertension (IIH) is a blinding condition amongst the young obese female population characterised by elevated intracranial pressure (ICP). The aetiology of IIH is not known and, as highlighted in the 2005 Cochrane review, an evidence base for treatment h…
Glaucoma is a leading cause of irreversible blindness and visual impairment. In the clinic, glaucomatous damage can be characterized by structural changes in the optic nerve head (ONH) and retinal nerve fibre layer (RNFL) that can be evaluated by various retinal-imaging techniqu…
Refractive laser eye surgery is a specialised field in ophthalmology which aims to correct the refractive disorder of an eye. The most established technique is LASIK, which has shown good results for the treatment of simple myopia. Complex refractive disorders, such as compound …
The multifocal electroretinogram (mfERG) provides spatial and temporal information on the retina’s function in an objective manner, making it a valuable tool for monitoring a wide range of retinal abnormalities. Analysis of this clinical test can however be both difficult and su…
The ocular microenvironment is immunosuppressive in animal models of antigen presenting cell function. My hypothesis was that in humans the normal ocular microenvironment maintains an immature dendritic cell (DC) phenotype, whereas in intraocular inflammation (uveitis) this regu…
The eye is a glucocorticoid target tissue which orchestrates expression of target genes through the glucocorticoid receptor (GR). The classical function of GR involves its interaction with glucocorticoid to influence transcription of genes involved in numerous physiological proc…
The purpose of this thesis was to investigate the micro- and nanostructural changes of the optic nerve head (ONH) regions, namely lamina cribrosa (LC), peripapillary sclera (ppsclera) and region of insertion (RoIns) as a function of age and glaucoma. The microstructure of ageing…
Thyroid-Associated Ophthalmopathy (TAO) is a debilitating inflammatory condition of the orbit occurring in 30-50% of Graves' Disease (GD) patients. It is not currently possible to predict which GD patients will develop TAO or the severity of their eventual ophthalmic manifestati…
Cataract is the opacification of the crystalline lens of the eye. Both childhood and later-onset cataracts have been linked with complex genetic factors. Cataracts vary in phenotype and exhibit genetic heterogeneity. They can appear as isolated abnormalities, or as part of a syn…
Ocular Mucous Membrane Pemphigoid (OcMMP) is a blinding immunobullous disease, characterised by auto-antibody driven conjunctival inflammation and scarring. My hypothesis was that progressive fibrosis in OcMMP, occurring in the apparent absence of clinical inflammation, was driv…
Glaucoma is a leading cause of visual disability across the world and when diagnosed the glaucoma patient will spend the rest of their life receiving treatment in managed clinical care. In the glaucoma clinic, retinal and optic nerve head (ONH) imaging can be used to help the cl…
How do we know where objects are in the environment and how do we use this information to guide our actions? Recovering the three-dimensional (3D) structure of our surroundings from the two-dimensional retinal input received from the eyes is a computationally challenging task an…