Phototoxic maculopathy due to extreme usage of infrared illuminator–assembled night-vision handheld scope

Abstract

Night-vision handheld scopes are of wide use in military operations at dark conditions. In some cases in the battlefield, as in our case report, if there is no light coming from any source (neither from Moon nor from Stars), infrared light-emitting diode illumination can be coupled with night-vision goggles. Reflected illumination from the target is mostly blue filtered through the night-vision goggles objective lens. Retinal damage induced by unfiltered blue light and visible light has been previously reported. We described a phototoxic maculopathy induced by night-vision handheld scope assembled with infrared light-emitting diode illuminator in two soldiers who are on duty at nights for nearly two-thirds of the last year. The phototoxic maculopathy can represent with typical optical coherence tomography findings such as intraretinal hyperreflective accumulation particularly located on the surface of outer retinal segments defect or presumably in the vicinity of the light passageway. Here, we presented a unique factor causing phototoxic maculopathy.