Talk:Iris (anatomy)

Merging
I think we should definitely merge this article with the Iris...it's too short to be on its own.

Menpri (talk) 21:03, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
 * This article is about a piece of anatomy, whereas your suggested merge (limbal ring) is about a physiologic variation. In the absence of any discussion over the last year I have removed the merge tags. LT90001 (talk) 13:54, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

References and cleanup
This article seriously needs some references and a good cleanup. (Especially the alternative medicine, "red eye" and veterinary bits stood out.) I dunno how to add the warning boxes though. --KatjaKat (talk) 20:26, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Function?
How about telling what the iris dose up front? Still don't know what it does and why it does it. Need to read more.


 * Was just thinking that. Article currently opens by describing the tissue the iris is made of. I am adding an opening statement that "The Iris is a membrane in the eye, responsible for controlling the amount of light reaching the retina." —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cmsg (talk • contribs) 13:46, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Black Ring
The black ring surrounding the iris is not described!?
 * If the iris is black, how can it have a black ring? Find a reference and add something, teach us! 173.164.86.190 (talk) 19:15, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

There is no black ring per se-- the dark ring seen at the periphery of the iris is due to a combination of 1) a shadow of the opaque portion of the limbus and 2) a thinning of the anterior stroma and crypts. Art4med (talk) 22:04, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Biometrics
Could someone put information in relating to the biometrics and how they relate to the iris? --Cyberman 20:59, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

There are iris scanners (iridial) and retinal scanners in use for biometrics, however the retinal scanners require a more intimate distance and flash/focus of the lens than a pair of irises-- the best capture of irides is as pairs. (removed the earlier unsigned comment on this) Art4med (talk) 22:00, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Two Toned Iris
Could someone explain (in the article) the reason the iris can be two-toned (varying from the centre to the outside) and for what purpose this serves? Cheers, --Floongle 21:30, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

See the article eye color. InFairness 07:39, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

This will take some time, but where there is a will... Thank you for the kind words which for me raise specters of higher standards. I can only keep them in iridial studies and proto-ionian Greek etymologies. Which brings me back to the design board : ) Monday
 * < flooded with POV, make it NPOV, etc...>
 * Sincerely, best to you ! Irismeister

, 2024-July-29, Universal Time,   articles in Wikipedia, and growing, growing...
 * "Remember! United we stand... Divided we fall... Well, well, well... well... Well, Stanley!"

The iris is the only living tissue always visible naturally, with open eyes.


 * What does this mean? -Montr&eacute;alais 09:10, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * I think it means that all human tissue is covered by skin except the iris? So your iris is the only tissue that others can see. ?? Kingturtle 10:06, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Well, that can't be it: skin is tissue, as are the mucosa in your mouth. - Montr&eacute;alais


 * What we call "skin", gentlemen, is only a cover of opaque, dead, keratin-imbibed stratum cornosum . NOT living cells. The other skin strata, lucidum , granulosum, spinosum , basalis are hardly visible via the layer of dead keratin. Skin, fur, nails, scales repeat the story. So the only living tissue always visible  remains well characterized.  Concedo , warts and all are alive but you see them in the iris very  rarely indeed. As for the with open eyes  this is kind of self-evident, like the we hold this truth to be self-evident that all men are created equal  passage in that We, the people document : ) The bottomline ? Kingturtle is right, and so is Montr&eacute;alais, but what is unique to the iris remains unique and well characterized by The iris is the only living tissue always visible naturally, with open eyes  methinks. Sincerely, irismeister 18:02, 2004 Feb 13 (UTC)

You can see living skin under your fingernails, in a similar way you can see the iris through your cornea. You can also see living tissue in your mouth, your tongue, for example. There's a line between "visible" and "exposed." Just being visible doesn't make it significant.

Not an anatomical illustration
The picture as replaced has no caption, let alone anatomical detail. It repeats the iridology instantiation, also without merit there. Anyway, it is hardly fit for an anatomical description, since most stromal detail is simply unavailable. Please revert or I'll do it myself in due time. Sincerely, irismeister 19:27, 2004 Feb 13 (UTC)

Better illustration would be good; will see if I have one with no conflict on rights (a medical illustrator serving ophthalmic literature for 30+ years). Art4med (talk) 22:07, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

question: Medical impact Using these scans?
Can there be medical problems, after using a Irisscan more times a day and used for many years?

Are there any midical reports about the use of these scans?

Well, it depends on the physical construction of the device used for scanning the iris. However, in most practical situations, both you and your eyes are unaware of the iris scan (which is purposely hidden near the ATMs for instance, by design, and has no chance to adjust pupil size, that's for sure. As a result, increased exposure of the retina may follow, through a larger-than-needed pupil aperture. The situation is aggravated by repetead, continuous exposure. I for instance use the ATM several times a day. The industry did NOT address your safety concern, or mine, in search for cheap secret identification. The situation is similar to that following aggressive marketing of spuriously protecting sun glasses: Lenses which do not contain an anti-UV screen and only reduce overall  light intensity, in fact endanger the eyes: The pupil reacts to the decreased overall light intensity, and dilates, increasing its diameter in a split second. More light enters the eye so spuriously protected by sun glasses. Sadly, this increased light admitted inside the eyeball includes higher-energy, lower-bandwidth, really dangerous UV light (not filtered by most sun glasses). It is UV light which damages the retina more than higher intensity mid-spectrum green or low-spectrum, low energy red and infra-red frequencies. The bottomline? Play natural. Play safe ! And check the anti-UV filtering properties of your sun glasses, iris scanners, flashes and light bulbs. Thank you for the interesting point raised. This should be included in the text. As for the second question not that I know, I'm afraid, there aren't. I checked PaperChase (a service of the National Library of Medicine listing ALL published medical literature). There are, however older studies concerning natural light. Corporations in America have a well documented habit of supressing information not serving their sales department in one way or another. Sincerely, irismeister 14:36, 2004 Feb 19 (UTC)

I am considering uploading an image of my own heterochrimia iridis to illustrate this paragraph - good idea? Nick04 18:02, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Cool ! Thank you very much, Nick04. Now we'll have our own Aristotle and Emperor :-) - Happy editing - irismeister 18:12, 2004 Feb 23 (UTC)


 * I'll get on it today or tommorrow - whenever I can retrieve the photos I have of it. Nick04 08:41, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC) - BTW, should mention it's a sectorial heterochrimia iridis.

Even better - we'll have a higher impact set of photographs, Nick04 - Happy editing :O) - irismeister 18:11, 2004 Feb 24 (UTC)

Added pic - needs work on the layout. I'll try to obtain a better copy from my eye hospital when I next visit for a checkup (the current image having being taken by me). Nick04 18:56, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

And very well taken as well ! - Happy editing - irismeister 23:22, 2004 Feb 26 (UTC)

Non-english sections

These sections were added to the article but are not English (what are they?), so I moved them here. Translate at will or whatever it's good for. --Chinasaur 00:05, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

1. Removed the translated fragment in Romanian: it's out of date, it should have been in a sandbox somewhere, it should be in the Romanian Wikipedia anyway, and it's in the way of the normal chronological addition of new comments. If someone really wants it they can access it from old edits in this page's History.

2. Re the reversion on 2nd Oct: &emsp; &emsp; a) This is no place for taxonomic hairsplitting - in this article, we only need an idea of the approximate scope. &emsp; &emsp; b) Theria is not a term commonly recognised, even among biologists, and its status is disputed &emsp; &emsp; c) The statement is wrong anyway. The 'vertebrate' eye plan is NOT restricted to the Therians, or even to the mammals - it's present in teleosts and cartilaginous fish. &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; It begins to disappear in the jawless fish, and is no longer recognisable in the non-vertebrate chordates.  So vertebrates is right on target.

Rhd 18:03, 2004 Oct 1 (UTC)

Manual of Style says spelling should be consistent
"Each article should have uniform spelling and not a haphazard mix of different spellings (it can be jarring to the reader). In particular, for individual words and word-endings. For example, do not use center (American) in one place and centre (British) in another." User:Niteowlneils
 * Indeed - "colour" and "color" are used all over the place. Will someone fix this? &mdash; 217.46.147.13 (talk) 12:18, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

New Picture
Maybe this guy will let us use his pictures of monkey eyes as diagrams. :)

iris

Irides
In that a search of Irides redirects to the Iris (anatomy) page.. I attempted to provide anyone searching for informtation on Irides the abstract strategy game with a link to the Irides(game) page. I don't understand why Elf deleted this link for the reason "I couldn't see what it had to do with "Iris", let alone specifically "Iris (anatomy)." when that is exactly why the link was created in the first place.. to allow those who weren't interested in Iris (anatomy) to find the information they wanted.


 * Ah ha, I see the difficulty. OK, the solution is to change the redirect to a disambiguation. Which isn't at all obvious to newer users, I'm afraid. Your heart's in the right place. :-)  So I went ahead and changed it. Try searching for Irides now.   Elf | Talk 03:38, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Article Improvement Drive
Contact lens is currently nominated to be improved on Article Improvement Drive. Please support the article with your vote. --Fenice 10:51, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Do these make up an individual's epigentic constitution?
First of three comments / questions: If I were a student having to find out what epigenetic means, and this were the first article I came upon, then I could interpret the first sentence in the section "Genetic and physical factors determining iris color" as meaning that "an individual's epigenetic constitution is made up of the combined effects of texture, pigmentation, fibrous tissue and blood vessels within the iris stroma". What then about the rest of the body? To avoid this, one could just leave out "which together make up an individual's epigenetic constitution", or, if one does want to make the point, I can suggest something like "the whole of which is epigenetically determined" or "which is part of the individual's epigenetic make-up". --Seejyb 21:04, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

The physics of eye colour
The paragraph starting "The optical mechanisms by which the non-pigmented stromal components influence eye color are complex, and many erroneous statements exist in the literature" is difficult to make sense of, and the present description specifically does not help the reader much to know what is erroneous. I would suggest that one starts out by plainly stating that, as far as is known, eye colour is determined both by One can than carry on to say what the pigments are (and are not - such as blue), and give a short description of what is meant by structural colour. Under structural colour, the parts about scattering, diffraction, interference, Tyndall, Rayleigh and Raman can be put in perspective (seen in the right light?). This is presumably the main area where the "erroneous statements" can then be pointed out. I see that Wikipedia has no article yet on structural colour, nor schemochrome, and in the article on Pigment, structural colour and pigment are differentiated in what seems to me an incorrect way. --Seejyb 21:10, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
 * pigment (biochrome), as well as by
 * altering of reflected light by the physical composition of the iris - molecules and microstructures that are not pigments (structural colour).

Red eye
The comment "...ocular albinism, in which the eye is otherwise healthy despite an obviously red pupil and a translucent pinkish iris due to reflected light from the fundus." is not true. Both of the albinos whom I know have blue eyes (iris), and apparently normal (black) pupils. Oculocutaneous and ocular albinism have different manifestations. I'll post what I have before I change anything... --Seejyb 21:14, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

'Scuse me while my brain goes 'splody
I wouldn't be the first person to call myself stupid (though I freely admit there are things I don't understand), but I was so blown away by the talk about radial contraction folds, crypts of Fuch and heterochromia, my brain shut down and I lost track of what the actual purpose, if any, of the iris is.

It isn't a particular uncommon thing for me to feel on many of the medical articles, as a matter of fact. I understand Wikipedia's an encyclopedia, and I wouldn't ever ask anyone to dumb down an article, but... the article seems inaccessible to a layman like myself.

Could someone please help with a somewhat simplified explanation or, at the very least, leave a message on my talk page explaining to me what the purpose of the iris is? ekedolphin 06:43, 3 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, what is your purpose? Like you and everyone else the irides has no purpose, it simply is there. Cuzandor 00:10, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

The iris functions akin to the diaphragm of a camera, helping to regulate the inflow of light toward the retina. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Bticho (talk • contribs) 04:49, 21 September 2006 (UTC).

Anatomy Box Image
I recently created and uploaded a high-quality image of a human Iris (blue). If no one objects, I will move the current iris-image in the anatomy box downward as a separate image and use the new one instead. Reason: higher Quality (approx. 4MPix) --JDrewes (talk) 16:11, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

No offense meant, but would it be alright to replace that image? It is a high-quality image, but it looks... how can I say this... like it came from a morgue. The image I would like to replace it with is still quite high resolution-- almost the same as yours, but it is wide instead of square.

Reason: Still good quality and looks better on the eye.

I would oppose this for a multitude of reasons: 1. Iris covers only about 20% of the image area - but this page is about the iris, not the eye and the facial area around it. I would suggest closer cropping. Therefore, resolution of the iris is actually rather low. If you can, you might try to get closer to your subject to get better magnification. 2. Image is severely overexposed (lower-left quadrant, not the actual iris, though) 3. No offense, but the main subject in this iris picture appears to be the reflection of the camera lens, which is indeed quite well readable, the hands of the photographer and the surrounding environment. I would suggest to use a darkened room instead of outdoors, and not to wear a white shirt. A black cloth over the camera would also help, as otherwise the flash return would again show up in the image. The amount of ambient reflection actually covers and suppresses most of the visible part of the iris. 4. Only about 60% of the iris is actually exposed, because of a partial eye aperture. I would suggest to simply use fingers to keep the eye aperture wide enough so as to allow a full view on the iris. 5. Noise/Denoising. Due to the inherent noise of the camera system, noise and denoising artifacts have reduced image detail, especially the finer facets in the "second layer" of this person's iris.

Your suggested picture may look better on the eye (to you), but imho the purpose of the lead image of the iris article should be the best possible illustration of what an iris looks like. And, I can assure you, my subject didn't come from the morgue, but instead is alive and well, and gave informed consent ;-)

To some up my points: in an anatomical description, quality and detail should supersede artistic beauty - even though beauty does lie in the eye of the observer ;-)

Cheers, --JDrewes (talk) 00:08, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Too human centric
This article could stand the attention of s.o. from an animal biology project. Lots of animals have irises. The article, as is, looks as though only humans did. What about cuttlefish, reptiles, goats and sheep, cats etc. Do any insects have irises?? 76.97.245.5 (talk) 14:38, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

epigenetic vs epistatic
under "Genetic and physical factors determining iris color": i think the genetic factors determining eye colour are epistatic, not epigenetic as quoted. I'm not 100% sure, but from the the explanation of how it works it sounds like epistasis, not epigenetics. Perhaps somebody can investigate this further?? 129.96.244.110 (talk) 06:52, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Average diameter?
This article needs to specify the average size. Jason Quinn (talk) 20:59, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

In the practice of ocularistry (the making of artificial eyes), the average Caucasoid iris is given to be 11.5 mm. This, however, is only the APPARENT size, as the (anatomical) limbus overhangs the peripheral iris to a varying degree, usually making the iris appear "wider than tall" (more overhang top and bottom). The ANATOMICAL iris is perfectly round as seen from the posterior, and averages 12mm. Art4med (talk) 21:53, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Conflict of Sources: Development of Iris Color
According to Britannica's coverage of the development of iris pigment:

"Usually, a baby belonging to the white races is born with blue eyes because of the absence of pigment cells in the stroma; the light reflected back from the posterior epithelium, which is blue because of scattering and selective absorption, passes through the stroma to the eye of the observer. As time goes on, pigment is deposited, and the colour changes; if much pigment is laid down the eye becomes brown or black, if little, it remains blue or gray."

On the other hand, Webvision, from the University of Utah, a trusted site on the physiology of the eye, presents this quote:

"Eye color, or more correctly, iris color is due to variable amounts of eumelanin (brown/black melanins) and pheomelanin (red/yellow melanins) produced by melanocytes. More of the former is in brown eyed people and of the latter in blue and green-eyed people. The Melanocortin-1 Receptor Gene is a regulator of eumelanin production and is located on chromosome(MCIR) 16q24.3. Point mutations in the MCIR gene will affect melanogenesis. The presence of point mutations in the MCIR gene alleles is a common feature in light skinned and blue/green eyed people"

The first one involves development over time, the second a chemical balance. Which one is right? We need an expert!

Nuvitauy07 (talk) 20:47, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Iris
The use of the title "Iris" is under discussion, see Talk:Iris (plant) where the plant is proposed to be the primary topic. -- 70.24.248.246 (talk) 21:30, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

different species
I actually came to this page to see if I could see a list of animals that had slit irises like cats juxtaposed against circular ones like humans, and then more uncommon things like goats and their horizontal rectangular irises. And it's not even all cats, the big cats have round irises. I was wondering if there was some taxonomic connection between the ones that have it one way versus another, but nope, apparently no one else cares, I am astounded by how shortsighted and limited these wikipedia articles are, I thought this was supposed to have a page on EVERYthing. I certainly got nowhere by searching for an actual article about slit iris.

75.175.48.64 (talk) 14:21, 23 August 2014 (UTC)


 * this information can be found in the Pupil article, as it's the pupil that is considered to have an unusual shape. ~ Boomur &#91;☎&#93; 14:39, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Recent string of reverts
I'm a bit confused over recent edits by User:Cavefish777 and User:Cavefish7777, and more recently, User:Troglobite64. These edits have generally made the "Eye color" section confusing and grammatically incorrect. After my rollback of the initial edits was reverted by the original editor (i think this was 777), i went ahead and did some cleanup off Cavefish's version, as the old version was less-than-ideal anyway. This has also been reverted, and I'm not really sure why. Another user has opened a sockpuppet investigation due to sockpuppetry associated with a similarly named account in the past. I was wondering if the cavefishes had anything to discuss, so that we could avoid an edit war. ~ Boomur &#91;☎&#93; 02:58, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Nomenclature
Is there a name for the iris and pupil combined? ie the non-white/sclera part of the eye, the coloured part? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.164.16.123 (talk) 22:46, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

Random Amber eyes section
There is this weird section inserted about Amber-colored eyes right in the middle of the section about Genetic and physical factors determining iris color. I moved it because it seems weird to have it as a top-level header. 45.37.108.163 (talk) 20:20, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Huh?
What does this mean: "This anterior surface projects as the dilator muscles." Is there perhaps a word missing at the end, like "contract"? Pollifax (talk) 03:40, 28 February 2018 (UTC)