Narrator: This is Science Today. Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have helped develop a new instrument that could provide eye doctors with the capability to better detect, diagnose and treat blinding retinal diseases, such as age-related macular degeneration or glaucoma. Scott Olivier, of the Lab's Optical Science & Technology division, says they designed an advanced ophthalmoscope.

Olivier: The advanced ophthalmoscope that we've developed using new technologies including what we call micro-machined adaptive mirrors enables us to correct the properties of the eye and make sharper images than has been possible in the past.

Narrator: This will allow doctors to see individual structures in the back of the eye and detect the first indications of eye disease much sooner than they could before.

Olivier: So, we've improved the resolution, the ability to see fine details in the back of the eye by factors of three or four or five times better viewing of the eye and gotten down to the level of seeing individual cells.

Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.