Cynthia Ann Toth

Cynthia Ann Toth is an American ophthalmologist who is Distinguished Professor of Ophthalmology at Duke University. Toth has pioneered the use of optical coherence tomography to better understand, diagnose and treat macular disease. She was awarded the 2021 Retina Research Foundation Pyron Award.

Early life and education
Toth earned her medical degree at Drexel University. She was the first person in her family to become a doctor. She moved to the Geisinger Medical Center and University of California, Davis for postgraduate study. After her residency, she joined the United States Air Force and served as an ophthalmologist in the field. After working in the Air Force, Toth decided she wanted to specialize in the retina, and moved to Wilford Hall Medical Centre as Chief of the Retina Service. She developed optical coherence tomography (OCT) for investigating retinal laser injury.

Research and career
Toth joined the faculty of Duke in 1993. She works on the diagnosis and surgical treatment of vitreoretinal and macular diseases. She uses optical coherence tomography to better understand disease and perform more precise surgery. She developed OCT for infant examination and guided ophthalmic surgery. OCT provides novel insight into eye conditions and information about changes in brain function. The Duke Advanced Research in Spectral Domain/Swept Source OCT Imaging (DARSI) Laboratory, established by Toth, looks to improve diagnostic methods for age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and retinal disease.

Tote demonstrated that macular translocation surgery could provide salvage therapy to people who had lost vision due to neovascular AMD, which resulted in the opportunity to auto-transplant the retina. DARSI uses OCT to investigate non-vascular aspects of retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) in awake infants. She was the first to demonstrate the in vivo process of retina maturation, developing a 3D rating system for retinal vascular abnormalities and macular edema. Her efforts have proven that OCT performed at the bedside in neonatal intensive care units can help to identify infants with vision and neurodevelopment problems and micro-anatomic response to interventions.

Toth developed portable OCT to image during surgery, and the first OCT-driven stereoscopic heads-up display (HUD) that can visualize surgical information in a microscope. In 2021, she was awarded the Retina Research Foundation Pyron Award and listed in the Global Ophthalmology Power List.