The NeurEYE research team, led by the University of Edinburgh with Glasgow Caledonian University, has collected almost a million eye scans from opticians across Scotland to develop a digital tool that can predict a person’s risk of dementia from a routine eye test.
Scientists will use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to analyse the image data, linking it to relevant patient data on demographics, treatment history and pre-existing conditions. Data has been anonymised and permission to use the data has been granted by the Public Benefit and Privacy Panel for Health and Social Care, part of NHS Scotland.
NeurEYE is the second project funded and supported by NEURii, a global collaboration between the pharmaceutical company Eisai, Gates Ventures, the University of Edinburgh, the medical research charity LifeArc and the national health data science institute Health Data Research UK. We reported on the first NEURii project, SCAN-DAN (that is using brain scans and AI to predict dementia risk) here: https://journalofdementiacare.co.uk/brain-scans-analysed-scan-dan
Retired mechanical engineer, David Steele, whose mum has Alzheimer’s, says of his family’s experiences around eye health and dementia:
“It took ten years for my mum to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. She was initially diagnosed with dry macular degeneration, but this masked the underlying issue that we now know to be cerebral blindness linked to Alzheimer’s. The connection between brain and eye was the missing link in her case.”
Professor of Clinical Ophthalmology at the University of Edinburgh and NeurEYE co-lead, Baljean Dhillon, says:
“The eye can tell us far more than we thought possible. The blood vessels and neural pathways of retina and brain are intimately related. But, unlike the brain, we can see the retina with the simple, inexpensive equipment found in every high street in the UK and beyond.”
You can find out more about the NeurEYE project here: https://edinburgh-innovations.ed.ac.uk/news/ai-software-tool-aims-to-use-high-street-eye-tests-to-spot-dementia-risk