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Dr. Elizabeth Irving

Seeking the myopia signal

In some ways, I’m a bit of a weird bird,” says School of Optometry professor Elizabeth Irving, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Animal Biology. “Not many optometrists come back and do eye research.”

Photo of Elizabeth Irving in the lab

But after completing her Doctor of Optometry degree at Waterloo, she followed it up with studies in physiological optics and vision science, earning a MSc and PhD at Waterloo, and completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Toronto. 

Inspired by work with her PhD supervisor, Jake Sivak, Irving is continuing studies in eye development. One area of her research examines ocular development in young chickens. By fitting the chicks with goggles that distort their vision, she was one of the first researchers to show that the eye grows to match its environment.

There are implications for myopia, or nearsightedness,” she explains, “which has been assumed to be primarily genetic. We have now shown there is clearly an environmental component."

“We were shocked,” she adds, noting that hatchling chicks’ eyes change size to adapt to distortions within a week. When goggles are removed, the chicks’ eyes recover to their baseline shape.

Now the question is: What is the mechanism by which the eye can tell whether it needs to get bigger or smaller? If we can figure out that signal, maybe we can help prevent myopia.”

Myopia affects some 25 per cent of North Americans of European ancestry, and runs as high as 90 per cent among Asian populations.

Although Irving’s research is not directly transferable to human myopia, there may be a common underlying mechanism. With the assistance of her graduate students, she’s collaborating with physics professor Melanie Campbell, who has adapted the laser in the Hartmann-Shack Aberrometer to document small aberrations in vision in live chicks.

I think we’re getting close to finding the answer to what the directional signal is.”