Eye forecast

Artificial intelligence will determine the risks of heart attack and stroke on the retina

Sergey Vasiliev, Naked Science

Eyes are not just a "mirror of the soul". Many initially unnoticeable diseases affect the condition of small vessels, which can be easily seen in the eyes. Scientists have previously shown that this way it is possible to recognize signs of parkinsonism, diabetes and other diseases. And the authors of the new work presented an already working system that uses AI to analyze retinal images and assess the risks of an imminent heart attack and stroke. This is reported in an article published in the British Journal of Ophthalmology (Rudnicka et al., Artificial intelligence-enabled retinal vasculometry for prediction of circulatory mortality, myocardial infarction and stroke).

A team led by Professor Alicja Rudnicka of St. George's University of London has prepared the QUARTZ algorithm (QUantitative Analysis of Retinal vessels Topology and siZe — "Quantitative analysis of the topology and size of retinal vessels"). For her training, data from UK Biobank and EPIC surveys were used, including retinal images and information about the health status of participants over the next seven to nine years.

The system was prepared on such data for more than 90 thousand people, it is able to assess the risks of stroke and heart disease on a scale of ten years. The algorithm analyzes the diameter of small arterioles and venules, their curvature and total area. The accuracy of the work was comparable with the results of using the method Framingham Risk Score (FRS), which is used for this today.

At the same time, FRS requires preliminary collection of pressure data and taking a blood test, and QUARTZ performs the same task based on a simple and fast retinal scan. Moreover, due to the peculiarities of the UK Biobank and EPIC surveys, retinal images were far from perfect, so the authors are confident that in the future the efficiency of QUARTZ will surpass FRS and other existing methods.

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