A research team led by Toru Nakazawa of the Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine has developed an AI model that can estimate so-called ‘retinal age’ based on a single retinal photograph.
The results of this study have been published in Communications Medicine and point to a promising role for artificial intelligence in early screening.
The AI model was trained on over 50,000 retinal images from healthy adults and validated with a further 7,000 images.
Based on visible features in the retina, such as blood vessels and tissue structures, the system calculates the biological age of the eye.
After adjusting for age and gender, the researchers found that people with conditions such as diabetes, heart disease or a previous stroke were more likely to have an ‘older’ retina than expected.
This suggests that accelerated ageing of the retina may be linked to broader health issues.
According to the researchers, this technology can be integrated almost seamlessly into existing healthcare processes.
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