A simple technique for photographing living microfilariae of Onchocerca volvulus in the anterior chamber of the eye.

SIR, Living microfilariae in the anterior chamber of the eye are a common sign of ocular onchocerciasis, but so far there has been no known technique for photographing them. A microfilaria in the corneal stroma was photographed with a retroillumination technique by Brown (1971), but the living microfilariae in the anterior chamber present a problem because of their mobility. Sarkies (1951) observed that the microfilariae in the anterior chamber could be seen with an ophthalmoscope in the light reflected from the fundus. It is possible to take photographs of the microfilariae in the anterior chamber with the fundus reflex as background and using a Kowa RC-2 camera. The media of the eye must be perfectly clear and the pupil well dilated. Also, the camera must be held in a position where the optic disc will be in line to give a luminous fundus reflex. The patient should have his head bent down before the examination, as described by Anderson and Fuglsang (1973), to make the maximum number of microfilariae