Slit Lamp Biomicroscopy

• Both eyes of the mice are examined by slit lamp biomicroscopy (Zeiss SLM30) at 48x magnification with a narrow beam slit lamp illumination at 25-30° angle from the direction of observation.

Funduscopy

• For routine screening purposes the head-worn binocular indirect ophthalmoscope Heine SIGMA 150K (Haag-Streit GmbH, Wedel) and an external 90D lens are used.
• Fundus photos are taken with the Heine Video OMEGA 2C (Dieter Mann GmbH, Mainaschaff) and a 40D lens mounted between the ophthalmoscope and the eye.
  

Laser Interference Biometry (LIB)

• The ACMaster (Carl Zeiss Meditec, Jena) equipped with the optical low coherence interferometry (OLCI) technique and a modified software optimised for the dimensions in the mouse eye is used.

Electroretinography (ERG)

• To record the ERG anaesthetised mice are introduced into a handheld Ganzfeld LED stimulator (Espion ColorBurst, Diagnosis LLC, Littleton, USA) on a sliding bed guided on a rail (High-Throughput Mouse ERG setup, Steinbeis-Transfer Centre for Biomedical Optics and Function Testing, Tübingen).

Optokinetic Drum

• The tested mouse is freely moving in a transparent acrylic glass cylinder placed in the centre of the optokinetic drum. While black and white stripes of the drum are rotating with a speed of 10 rpm the movement behaviour and head tracking of the mouse is documented.
  

Histology

• For the morphologic analysis eyes are embedded in plastic medium. Transverse 2 µm sections are cut with an ultramicrotome (Ultratom OMU3; Reichert, Walldorf), stained with methylene blue and basic fuchsin and evaluated with a light microscope (Axiolplan; Carl Zeiss Meditec, Göttingen).
  

The mouse eye