Retinal Diagnostics training

Irish national trainee Eóin Tuohy has his retina imaged by ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer during training for Retinal Diagnostics at ESA's European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany. Eóin is part of the team behind the technology demonstration, and helped adapt an ocular lens used for routine clinical diagnostic operations, for use with a tablet in space.

Matthias and his NASA colleague Raja Chari (left) are two of the first astronauts to try the technology in orbit. Images of their retinas taken during spaceflight will be used to train an artificial intelligence (AI) model. All going well, this model will be used to automatically detect changes in the optic nerve of astronauts, known as Space-Associated Neuro-ocular Syndrome (SANS).