"Our age of anxiety is in great part due to the result of trying to do today's jobs with yesterday's tools."
- Marshall McLuhan

More than one million surgical procedures for cataract removal are performed each year in the U.S. alone. Two of the top three Medicare expenditures relate to cataract diagnosis and treatment. Visual Pathways has developed the DigiCat Imager™ ("DCI") to provide rapid, simple, digital and quantitative imaging of cataracts. The DCI can measure the cataract and track its development over time so an objective, appropriate and timely surgical decision can be made. VPI’s management believes that this technology is especially useful in today’s healthcare environment, as insurance companies now require more detail for justification of cataract removal reimbursement, and the DigiCat can provide that detail.

Key Advantages of the DigiCat Imager™

• Hand-held
• Dramatically improves convenience of examining patients, including those who are non-ambulatory.
• Infrared illumination for cataract imaging – no discomfort from glare
• Both the patient and the eye care specialist can view the display of the cataract image in real time on a monitor.
• The proprietary optics design of the DCI renders even very subtle cataracts visible.
• The eye care specialist can view a color-coded digital image of the cataract…different colors indicating different cataract densities (light scatter).
• Numerical values that quantify the severity of the cataract also are displayed on the computer monitor, so the examiner can easily point out and discuss the cataract with the patient.

The Company was awarded U.S. patent 6,834,958, “Instruments and Methods for Examining and Quantifying Cataracts” in December 2004. International patents covering the DigiCat Imager are pending.

Market availability is projected for mid-2006.