Turning Images into Insight: The Science at UH Driving Better Eye Health

UH Clinical Update | June 2026

Take any cornea, glaucoma or retina therapeutic advancement over the past 30 years, and there’s a good chance that the Eye Image Analysis Reading Centers (EIARC) at the UH Eye Institute and Case Western Reserve University were integrally involved in the research.

Under the EIARC umbrella are two specialized centers – one devoted to the cornea, the Cornea Image Analysis Reading Center (CIARC), the other to the retina, the Retina Diseases Image Analysis Reading Center (REDIARC). Their highly trained experts view and grade ophthalmic imaging studies, some as part of federally funded studies, others from third-party corporate sponsors. The team of ophthalmologists, optometrists, ophthalmic photographers and others with research and science backgrounds undergo rigorous training where they learn to assess and analyze the effects of drugs, devices, diseases and procedures on both the anterior and posterior segment of the eye.

Beth Ann Benetz, Scientific Director of the EIARC at UH, says there are currently 54 studies underway within the center – 37 focused on the cornea and 17 on the retina. She is supported by Jonathan Lass, MD, Director of the EIARC and Medical Director of the CIARC, and Charles I. Thomas Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine, and Shree Kurup MD, Medical Director of the REDIARC.

And beyond just the sheer numbers, these studies are impactful. The CIARC has been a leader in cornea research over the past three decades through pivotal participation and leadership of randomized clinical trials sponsored by the National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health. NIH grants are received and administered by Case Western Reserve University. The federal Cornea Donor Study and Specular Microscopy Ancillary Study, for example, led to the discovery that donor age does not significantly affect cornea graft survival or endothelial cell loss, transforming donor selection practices, Benetz says.

“We were able to show that other than at the very high and the very low ends of the age spectrum, there was no impact of donor age on graft success, and so we were able to increase the donor pool for corneal transplants,” she says.

Further, the Cornea Preservation Time Study demonstrated that donor corneas can be preserved for up to 11 days for Descemet's Stripping Automated Endothelial Keratoplasty (DSAEK) procedures -- a partial-thickness corneal transplant -- expanding the global donor pool. And the Diabetes Endothelial Keratoplasty Study demonstrated that donor diabetes does not impact graft outcomes, expanding the donor pool to include donors who have diabetes. Read more about this study in this issue of UH Clinical Update.

“That is already having an impact on tissue evaluation and eye banking,” Benetz says.

The REDIARC similarly has supported industry-sponsored clinical trials that have made major advances in retina disease therapeutics.

“For our retina studies, we're doing a lot of efficacy studies, evaluating whether or not a particular treatment is at least as good as current standard of care practice for the management of diabetic retinopathy and macular degeneration,” she says. “Images come in to us, including fundus photography, fluorescein angiography, OCT images, fundus autofluorescence -- a whole series of retinal diagnostic imaging. We receive those images de-identified, so we don't know who the patients are, and we don't know what treatment they're getting. And we analyze specific elements of the grade. Our role for these studies is to do unbiased image analysis.”

Beyond reading and analyzing ophthalmic images, the EIARC team also includes professionals devoted to regulatory compliance with IRB protocols, as well as those who can offer scientific advice on study design at any point in the process. Data analysis and data management experts also build databases and data collection tools, working very closely with the compliance and regulatory team to make sure databases are all compliant.

“They build systems for us for data collection for all of these studies,” Benetz says. “It is all about the accuracy of the data and its delivery to the sponsor on time with their demanding trial timeline to completion.”

Results show that this painstaking approach to ophthalmic research is paying off at UH, with growing demand for the expertise the EIARC provides. Annual revenue for the EIARC has doubled in the past five years, from $2 million in 2020 to $4+ million in 2025. As a result, staff numbers grew from 34 to 51 during that same period.

For Scientific Director Benetz, this means the EIARC can continue with its important work – not least of which is working toward the day when every gift of a donated cornea is a successful one, and vision is saved with new treatments for glaucoma, corneal disease or dystrophies such as dry eye or Fuchs' endothelial dystrophy, and retinal diseases such as diabetic retinopathy and macular degeneration.