Dr. Benton Chuter is an ophthalmology resident at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center whose career sits at the intersection of clinical medicine, computational science, and medical device design. At a time when artificial intelligence is redefining how eye disease is detected and treated, his training positions him to lead the field forward.
Benton earned his Bachelor of Science in Human Biology and Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University, where he also competed as a Division I scholarship athlete. He served as head teaching assistant for Stanford's largest design thinking course and he also taught cardiothoracic surgical skills at the Stanford Surgical Skills Fellowship. Through the CHARIOT program at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, Dr. Chuter led the design and manufacture of clinical devices including virtual reality systems, bedside entertainment systems, and venous access training phantoms. The demand generated by this work led Benton to found Flux PD, a medical device engineering consultancy through which he designed and tested a novel angioplasty balloon catheter system and developed virtual reality hardware for clinical use. He holds a provisional patent for a virtual reality kit designed for hospital environments.
Benton entered UC San Diego School of Medicine to bring his engineering skills directly to patient care. Over five years in the Zangwill Lab, he developed deep learning approaches for glaucoma detection using fundus photography and OCT imaging, producing multiple first-author publications in journals including Ophthalmology Science and Translational Vision Science & Technology. His work earned an ARVO Travel Award, an AAO Best Poster Award, and a $30,000 MedGap Program Award, establishing early proof of his ability to compete for research funding. Equally central to his training was direct service: as ophthalmology free clinic manager at the UCSD Student-Run Free Clinics, he coordinated eye care for uninsured patients and published research on optimizing diabetic retinopathy screenings for underserved populations. Conversational in medical Spanish and a tutor for San Diego refugee families, his commitment to expanding access to care ran through every part of medical school. As co-president of the Ophthalmology Student Interest Group, senior advisor to junior medical students, and facilitator in UCSD's Clinical Mentoring Program, he remained as dedicated to teaching and mentorship as to his own training.
After earning his MD, Benton completed a pre-residency research fellowship at the Hamilton Eye Institute under Dr. Monica Jablonski, where he developed deep learning pipelines for automated optic nerve morphometric analysis. He is among the first to use deep learning to quantify the effect of a pharmaceutical agent on optic nerve morphology. Alongside his research, he served weekly in clinic and biweekly as a scrub tech in the operating room, sharpening his clinical and surgical skills. Drawn by the opportunity to apply his skills toward technology with direct translational impact on patient care, while at HEI, he also consulted for Science Corporation on their PRIMA cortical vision prosthesis. His ability to move between academic research and commercial product development reflects a translational fluency that few trainees possess.
His AI research in ophthalmology has produced over a dozen peer-reviewed publications in journals including JAMA Ophthalmology, Ophthalmology Science, and Translational Vision Science & Technology, with presentations at the American Academy of Ophthalmology and ARVO. He was one of only four trainees nationwide selected for the 2026 AUPO/Research to Prevent Blindness Resident and Fellow Research Forum. Benton's current research applies deep learning and foundation AI models to ophthalmic imaging to improve the detection and management of glaucoma and other eye diseases. He leads and mentors a team of over ten medical students in their research, serves as a peer reviewer for several leading ophthalmology journals, and continues to provide direct patient care and surgical assistance.
A rowing champion in his youth, he has carried that same team-first mentality into every stage of his career. He is driven to combine his engineering expertise, computational skills, and clinical training to improve and broaden access to ophthalmologic care. He aims to mentor the next generation of physician-engineers and bridge academic research and clinical practice to bring that vision to patients. Read more