“Many black spots”
20-year-old male, otherwise healthy, presenting for routine follow-up. Black spots were seen incidentally on review of fundus photographs for eye disease in the contralateral eye.
Vision OS: 20/20 cc
Spectacle Rx: -4.00 sphere OUSome auxiliary lenses used with fundus photography cameras can cause “Allen Dots” which are faint artifactual darkened round spots at the center of a fundus image. They may be seen with single images, or with montage images as this case demonstrates.
Allen dots are more commonly seen with myopes. They can potentially obscure detail in areas of interest (e.g. the fovea center). Slightly adjusting the patient’s fixation to de-center the Allen dot in less critical area is a potential solution.
Seeing the dark spot (i.e. Allen dot) at the center of each (and sometimes every) photograph confirms that this is only an artifact. Also, they will not be seen with clinical exam (i.e. slit lamp biomicroscopy and indirect ophthalmoscopy).
Ophthalmic Atlas Images by EyeRounds.org, The University of Iowa are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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