Dr. Teresa Chen is an ophthalmologist with specialty training in glaucoma, seeing both adult and pediatric glaucoma patients. A member of the Glaucoma Service, she is one of the international leaders in 3D imaging research of the eye.

Dr. Chen focuses her research on 3D imaging of the eye using spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) and swept-source optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging. Along with collaborators at Massachusetts General Hospital, her research group was the first to image the human eye in vivo with video-rate SD-OCT, the most commonly used imaging modality for the care of glaucoma patients worldwide. With SD-OCT, ultra-high resolution 3D video imaging of the optic nerve and the retina is possible. Dr. Chen and her Massachusetts General Hospital collaborators were also the first to image the eye with swept source OCT, which is also used in ophthalmology clinics worldwide. Dr. Chen has been both first and last author on major papers published in the top three ophthalmology journals, Archives of Ophthalmology (now JAMA Ophthalmology), American Journal of Ophthalmology, and Ophthalmology. She has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers, book chapters and reviews, and case reports.

Actively engaged in teaching and mentoring medical students, residents, and fellows, Dr. Chen has been the course director for the Glaucoma Conferences at Mass Eye and Ear for two decades. She is also the 2017 recipient of the Harvard Medical School’s Clifford Barger Excellence in Mentoring Award. She was also the first course director for the biennial Chandler Grant Glaucoma Symposium, which is an international Harvard Ophthalmology glaucoma conference held at Mass Eye and Ear. 

Dr. Chen has served as past Vice President, as well as past President, of the Chandler Grant Glaucoma Society and the Mass Eye and Ear Glaucoma Alumni Society. She also served as Mass Eye and Ear’s first Chief Quality Officer for Ophthalmology from 2008 to 2018. Additionally, she is the editor of Glaucoma Surgery - the top-selling subspecialty book published by Elsevier the year it was published, which has since been translated into several foreign languages.

Clinical Interests

• Adult glaucoma
• Pediatric glaucoma