May 31, 2024

Kerify™ Cornea Assessment Demonstration featured at Eye Bank Association of America 2024 Annual Meeting

Transplant surgeons and eye bank professionals attending the EBAA Annual Meeting on June 5 - 8 at the Loews Kansas City Hotel, Kansas City, Missouri, are invited to the Kerify™ booth in the Exhibit Hall to watch live demonstrations of this latest innovation in donor cornea evaluation. 

Kerify™ is an automated computer vision software system that, for the first time, provides accurate quantification of the total processing damage seen in donor corneas. Developed by Lions Gift of Sight and ADCIS and supported by EBAA’s investment capital, Kerify™ will determine donor corneal health more accurately than current methods, improving patient outcomes with corneal transplantation.

Kerify™ offers:

• Assessment of entire endothelium. The current gold standard, specular microscopy, by comparison only assesses less than 1% of endothelium.
• Quantified endothelial damage as a percent cell damage over entire endothelium. In the absence of complete endothelial assessment, the current practice is to describe endothelium using qualifying comments like “mild cell drop out” or “several stress lines”.
• Reduced time spent assessing endothelium. Currently, aseptic procedure is interrupted to remove cornea in a chamber from the processing environment, warm the tissue, then evaluate a select area of endothelium by specular microscope.
• A whole picture of endothelium for surgeon review. Surgeons are more completely informed upon tissue selection.

Kerify™ Demonstration Schedule 

Table 23, Exhibit Hall
June 5 from 5:15 pm - 7 pm
June 6 from 7 am - 8 am, Noon - 1 pm, and 3:15 pm - 3:45 pm
June 7 from 7:15 am - 8:15 am and 11:30 am - 1 pm
June 8 from 7:15 am - 8:15 am

About the Partners

Lions Gift of Sight is a community-based non-profit eye bank. Founded in 1960, it is the oldest anatomical donation organization in Minnesota. LGS serves the needs of donors in Minnesota, western Wisconsin, and North Dakota and distributes corneas and ocular tissue for transplantation, research, and medical education throughout the world. 

The Eye Bank Association of America is the world’s oldest transplant association and is the nationally recognized accrediting and standards setting body for eye banks. The EBAA champions the restoration of sight by providing core services to members that advance donation, transplantation, and research throughout the world.

ADCIS is a Computer Vision pure player developing innovative image processing and analysis software in areas including ophthalmology, life sciences, and industrial processes. 

More information about Kerify™

Brian Philippy, BChE, BS, CEBT
Director of Business Development, Lions Gift of Sight
612-624-5804
[email protected]

May 13, 2024

Vision-Restoring Corneal Transplants Performed in 2023 Have a Lifetime Net Benefit of Nearly $8 Billion

Corneal transplants performed in the United States last year will result in nearly $8 billion in total net benefits over the lifetime of the recipients, according to a recently updated study by the Eye Bank Association of America (EBAA).

The study compared the medical cost of transplant procedures to the direct and indirect lifetime costs of the alternative – living with blindness or severe vision impairment. With a corneal transplant, an individual avoids the direct expenditures that come with vision loss, such as higher routine medical costs, long-term care costs, and the indirect costs of potential years of lost productivity to both the patient and their caregivers.

Since EBAA’s founding in 1961, more than two million individuals have received sight-restoring corneal transplants. Lions Gift of Sight, located in Saint Paul, Minnesota, is one of those EBAA member eye banks making an impact. Last year, through cornea donations from Minnesota, Wisconsin, and North Dakota residents, Lions Gift of Sight provided 1,726 corneas to help patients in the U.S. and around the world regain their sight. The lifetime economic impact of the transplants performed in the U.S. with Lions Gift of Sight tissue exceeded $209,309,148.

“EBAA represents the 56 eye banks in the U.S. providing corneal tissue to over 80,000 recipients domestically and around the world each year,” said EBAA President & CEO Kevin Corcoran. “I’ve spoken with cornea recipients and have felt the emotional impact of restoring someone’s vision. Now we understand, in real numbers, the economic impact of our work. It’s all made possible through the generosity of cornea donors and the care and dedication of EBAA-member eye banks and corneal surgeons.”

The restoration of sight is particularly valuable to Medicaid beneficiaries, our society’s most economically disadvantaged members. Loss of vision compounds their challenges, making their journey to financial independence infinitely more difficult. This study clearly demonstrates that providing access to corneal transplants is a cost-effective way to support their economic health.

For more information about cornea donation and transplantation or about this study, please contact Lions Gift of Sight at LGS-Contact.umn.edu or 612-625-5159.

The Eye Bank Association of America (EBAA) is the oldest transplant association in the U.S. EBAA leads the transplantation field by establishing medical standards, maintaining accreditation requirements, providing comprehensive training and certification programs for eye bank personnel, and engaging in advocacy to support eye donation, cornea transplantation, and research. EBAA member eye banks have provided tissue for more than 2 million sight-restoring corneal transplants. To learn more, visit restoresight.org.

Lions Gift of Sight, a charter member of the Eye Bank Association of America, is a community-based non-profit eye bank. Founded in 1960, it is the oldest anatomical donation organization in Minnesota. LGS serves the needs of donors in Minnesota, western Wisconsin, and North Dakota and distributes corneas and ocular tissue for transplantation, research, and medical education throughout the world. 

February 5, 2024

Lions Gift of Sight, Eye Bank Association of America, and ADCIS Innovate Eye Banking

Lions Gift of Sight (LGS), a world-renowned eye bank; ADCIS, a company specializing in innovative and high-performance image processing; and the Eye Bank Association of America (EBAA), which represents every non-profit eye bank in the United States, are proud to announce the latest innovation in donor cornea evaluation: Kerify. 

Kerify is an automated computer vision software system that, for the first time, provides accurate quantification of the total processing damage seen in donor corneas. Developed by LGS and ADCIS, and supported by EBAA investment capital, Kerify will determine donor corneal health more accurately than current methods. This will improve patient outcomes with corneal transplantation and eye bank operations.

After processing, eye banks typically determine whether a donor cornea is healthy enough to transplant by using a specular microscope. Specular microscopes can visualize and evaluate how healthy the cornea endothelium is. This is the key criteria for determining the quality of donor corneas. However, specular microscopes cannot scan more than 1% of the cornea, so they often miss significant areas of damage and can thus be quite inaccurate. Specular microscopy is also time consuming to perform, taking up to 30 minutes to evaluate a single cornea. And the accuracy of specular microscopy is heavily dependent on image quality, which can vary widely, depending on numerous finicky details such as how warm the cornea is, how long it has been allowed to sit, and how the cornea was processed. 

An alternative to specular microscopy is using vital dyes to stain the damaged areas on the cornea endothelium. Using such staining techniques, eye banks can rapidly and consistently visualize how much damage has been done to the entire cornea. However, current methods to quantify the amount of stained damage on a given cornea are time consuming and highly dependent on the skill of the technician. Under these conditions, the eye banks frequently rely on estimates of how much damage is seen on staining, and these estimates tend to overestimate the damage. This contributes to the waste of transplantable tissue. 

Kerify improves upon the endothelial staining method by providing computer-aided quantification of the area of damage revealed by stain. This automated method is poised to become the gold standard for tissue assessment. Using Kerify, eye banks can accurately assess endothelial damage and produce a report for surgeons in seconds. Kerify provides accurate, comprehensive, and reproducible analysis of the health of processed corneas, so eye banks and surgeons can ensure donor corneas are well-suited for transplantation.

“I am delighted to be partnering with LGS and EBAA to bring ADCIS computer vision expertise to eye banks,” said François Potevin, ADCIS Director. “I strongly believe that image processing software can support eye banks in their tissue assessment processes. And this is only the beginning!”

“EBAA has been committed to driving innovation in eye banking and corneal transplantation since our founding in 1961. We believe that Kerify will result in greater certainty for surgeons, improved operations for eye banks, and better stewardship of the gift of sight provided by our generous cornea donors,” added Kevin Corcoran, EBAA’s President & CEO.

“It is our duty as stewards of these precious donated gifts to leverage technology to further evolve our capabilities in restoring sight. The team at Lions Gift of Sight identified a gap in tools available to eye banks and has worked with the experts at ADCIS to innovate solutions. The EBAA is helping us put this tool in the hands of technicians to start improving processes as soon as possible,” reported Brian Philippy, LGS Director of Business Development.

“Although corneal transplantation and corneal tissue processing techniques have evolved immensely over the past two decades, our tools for evaluating corneas for transplantation have not changed since tissue evaluation was first standardized. There is a huge technology gap in how we transplant corneas and the antiquated method in which we pick out corneas for transplantation. Bringing our tissue evaluation technology up to par with modern corneal transplantation techniques with Kerify is critical for improving patient outcomes from corneal transplantation,” said Joshua H. Hou, MD, Medical Director LGS, Associate Professor of Ophthalmology, University of Minnesota. 

Thanks to EBAA funding, Kerify will soon be available to eye banks worldwide. 

Lions Gift of Sight is a community-based non-profit eye bank. Founded in 1960, it is the oldest anatomical donation organization in Minnesota. LGS serves the needs of donors in Minnesota, western Wisconsin, and North Dakota and distributes corneas and ocular tissue for transplantation, research, and medical education throughout the world. 

The Eye Bank Association of America is the world’s oldest transplant association and is the nationally recognized accrediting and standards setting body for eye banks. The EBAA champions the restoration of sight through core services to members and advancing donation, transplantation, and research throughout the world.

ADCIS is a Computer Vision pure player developing innovative image processing and analysis software in areas including ophthalmology, life sciences, and industrial processes. 

For more information, please contact the Kerify team at [email protected].

July 1, 2023

LGS Well-Represented at Eye Bank Association of America Meeting

Lions Gift of Sight sent 11 staff members to learn, teach, and network at the Eye Bank Association of America (EBAA) annual meeting on June 21 - 24 in Dallas, Texas. The event presented many opportunities for our eye bankers to shine.

Chris LaGassie, Joshua Hou, MD, and Ching Yuan, PhD, all made podium presentations as follows: Effect of Paired Radial Incision Placement Relative to DMEK Scroll Axis on Triple Scroll Formation in Young Donor Tissue (LaGassie), a Case Study on 'A Recipient with CJD’ (Hou), and Research: Creating a POSITIVE IMPACT on the World and Your Bottom Line (Yuan).