The use of Scheimpflug photography in the documentation of clinical states and in the biometry of the anterior eye segment.

From the start of our collaboration with the Institut für Experimentelle Ophthalmologie in the early 1980s, the scientist Otto Hockwin has always taken the greatest interest in the clinical use of Scheimpflug photography. I became a student of Hockwin's through my work on the effects of Verapramil. The straightforwardness and purposeful approach with which Hockwin persued any subject, once he had taken it up, served me as example and thereby helped me repeatedly to regain courage and patience in my own work. The Scheimpflug apparatus developed by Hockwin's team has proven its superiority over the conventional slit lamp photography through its excellent depth of focus. Further to the clinical applications of the Scheimpflug photography worked out by us and summed up once again in this paper, it also presents a widening of the scope hence available within ophthalmological teaching methods, which we can hardly do without these days. The students benefit from the far superior spatial image conveyed by the optical section through the anterior eye segment, compared to that obtained by the conventional slit lamp photography alone. The precision of the reproducible image of the anterior segment furthermore represents a vital supplementary aid in the solution of pre- and postoperative, as well as specialist diagnostic problems.