Poorna was awarded a prestigious National Eye Institute Travel Grant for her work titled “Retinal thickness changes in diabetic patients with peripheral retinal vessel whitening” because the findings were of high interest to the vision and ophthalmology research community.
The study found that, using the latest ultra-widefield retinal imaging, peripheral whitening of retinal vessels may be a prognostic marker for diabetic disease. When peripheral whitened vessels are seen the macula, the thickness of the macula, the area responsible for central vision, is thinner.
The study looked further to validate this and found the more parts of the peripheral retina with vessel whitening the greater the thinning at the macula with loss associated of retinal tissue. Previously it had been shown that vision was also reduced in these patients suggesting that vessel whitening in diabetics is associated with loss of function.