Why have an OCT wellness scan?

Many common eye diseases creep up on you, without any warning signs. Even if your vision and eyes appear perfectly fine, it’s useful for your optician to gain a full understanding of your overall eye health through additional tests.

The scan is done on each eye individually. It is completely painless; it doesn’t use a flash so won’t dazzle you like a retinal photograph can.

By attending multiple OCT scans over the years, your optician can notice the subtle changes in the thickness of the layers that can reveal the early stages of eye disease, like glaucoma or diabetes.

Your optician may recommend that you attend an OCT scan even when your eyes are healthy in order to provide a baseline image and to look for subtle changes and progression.

An OCT scan can help your optician to see what’s going on beneath the surface of your eye, providing a picture of the layers of your retina. Your optician can then map out the layers and measure the thickness. The optic nerve head is also visible at the back of your eye, so an OCT scan can also evaluate any disorders of the optic nerve.

OCT technology uses light waves to take images of your retina; similar to how an ultrasound scan uses sound waves. During an OCT scan, you will be asked to sit in front of a small machine with your chin placed on a support. The instrument can scan your eye without touching it.