Key Points:
- Recent studies show retinal imaging predicts disease risks and mortality, advancing personalized healthcare with AI and teleophthalmology.
- Many of these eye scans can be done using existing equipment at a traditional eye doctor’s office and eventually may be possible to complete using a cell phone.
A person approaches a locked door, puts their eye on a peephole camera, undergoes scanning laser analysis, and the door opens.
Everyone here has seen this movie scene before. From the 1980s onward, eye scanning has been a staple of Hollywood blockbusters like Blade Runner and many more. It has also been the setting for some iconic moments, like in Demolition Man, when the villain steals an eyeball from the prison warden and uses it to quicken his escape.
The majority of films and real-life applications use biometric or recognition tools like eye scanning to implement security measures, which work by analyzing patterns to verify authenticity.
Even the most basic of eye scans, which an optometrist takes by photographing the retina, can reveal a great deal about our eye health. Being situated behind the eye’s transparent structures makes imaging the retina easy and safe for healthy tissue.
It turns out, though, that these images of our eyes can tell us a lot more than we first imagined. These noninvasive retinal scans may allow us to assess the risk of diseases, including some linked to aging.
Researchers and doctors from Mass Eye and Ear, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard recently found out that they can predict how likely it is that someone will get eye and systemic diseases down the road. The researchers discovered strong links between the retina’s thinning layers and an elevated risk of ocular, cardiac, pulmonary, metabolic, and neuropsychiatric disorders. Thinner retinal layers were associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and renal disease, and the researchers also found that certain layers were associated with worse lung and heart function.
AI and a eye can tell you a lot about risk of death
When it comes to the connections between an eye scan and health, this is not the only time that researchers have looked into the matter. Studies conducted in the past have demonstrated that there are connections between the health of the retina and a variety of health conditions, such as aging and aging-related diseases.
Also, a growing number of studies have suggested that the blood vessels in the retina can tell us a lot about heart health and the part of the retina that allows us to see can give us a sense of the risk for neurodegenerative diseases with the brain.
In a study earlier this year, a team of scientists from China developed a different AI algorithm using tongue, retinal, and facial images to estimate biological age.
In another study, one from 2020, researchers said that the retina may also be able to provide us with an easy, noninvasive way to determine our body’s true biological age, which may or may not mirror our chronological age. The researchers achieved this by creating an algorithm that is based on deep learning, an AI technique that teaches computers to process data in a way that is similar to how the human brain does it, to accurately predict a person’s retinal age from images of the back internal surface of the eye—the fundus—and to see whether any difference between this and a person’s real age—retinal age gap—might be linked to a heightened risk of death.
In most healthy middle-aged adults the algorithm could accurately predict a person’s age within a window of three and half years from a single retinal image. More interesting was the discovery that those with a large gap between their chronological age and their retinal age had a higher risk of death over an 11-year follow-up.
Those with retinal age gaps larger than three years were between 49 and 67 percent more likely to die than those with a small retinal age gap. For every year difference between retinal age and chronological age the study calculated a two percent increase in all-cause mortality and a three percent increase in death from causes other than cardiovascular disease and cancer.
A global spectacle
Given the rising burden of non-communicable diseases and population aging globally, the early identification and delivery of personalized healthcare might have tremendous public health benefits. Disease prevention efforts may benefit from the retina’s apparent ability to provide a unique and easily accessible “window” into potential mortality risks. For example, if retinal images indicate a high risk of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, patients may be referred for follow-up screenings or preventive treatment.
With the help of smartphone-based teleophthalmology, which involves the provision of eye care through digital medical equipment and telecommunications technology, these predictions can be even more easily accessed. As a result, AI-enhanced teleophthalmology has clear advantages in finding disease risk and prognosis quickly, without surgery, and at a low cost.
The recent development of smartphone-based retinal cameras, together with the integration of deep learning algorithms, may in the future provide point-of-care assessments of aging and improve accessibility to tailored risk assessments.
In the future, when digital health and related technologies like the “Internet of Things” and deep learning continue to advance at an exponential rate, teleophthalmology could play a pivotal role in revolutionizing eyecare by enabling data-driven automation of clinical decision-making and personalized eye care through constant monitoring and analysis of individual data.
Soon enough, everyone will be able to take a picture of their eye with their phone, see how they are doing overall, and learn about their chances of developing age-related diseases and dying prematurely. And you’ll be able to do it from anywhere—whether you’re in the Sahara or the French Riviera.
All you’ll have to do is say, “Eye consent.”
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