‘Eyes are the windows to the brain’: U of S researchers developing Alzheimer’s detection tool

Alzheimer’s disease could soon be detected at the optometrist’s office using a retina scan, with help from artificial intelligence (AI).

“It is very famous to say that eyes are the windows to the brain,” University of Saskatchewan (U of S) researcher Changiz Taghibiglou said on Wednesday. “This is the externally directly accessible part of the brain, our eyes.”

Taghibiglou is working with U of S researcher Sara Mardanisamani and a team of local doctors and scientists to develop a new, non-invasive AI screening tool for early detection of Alzheimer’s disease. A current testing method for people who already have symptoms is a lumbar puncture which is used to take a sample of cerebrospinal fluid.

“The ultimate detection of Alzheimer’s disease currently is postmortem,” Taghibiglou said. “This means that when someone dies, pathologists can use the brain tissue.”

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Taghibiglou and Mardanisamani are training an AI algorithm to identify patterns of degeneration related to Alzheimer’s disease. Over two years, they will analyze decades-old optical coherence tomography (OCT) scans of the retina from around 100 people who were recently diagnosed. They will be compared to decades-old retina scans from a control group of healthy people.

“We will analyze the thickness of the layers of the optical nerve and the retina layers, and analyze the alteration of the thickness,” Taghibiglou said.

Taghibiglou said their ultimate goal is for the AI tool to be used in the optometrist’s office and for a patient’s family physician to be notified if the algorithm detects anything abnormal. The team hopes if the disease can be detected years before signs and symptoms begin showing, action can be taken for better patient outcomes.

“They would be able modify their lifestyle, doing more physical exercise to slow down the progress of that neurodegenerative disease,” he said. “People can slow down the progress of the disease and postpone the start of the disease.”

Their project, “Screening eyes of people in Saskatchewan with non-invasive imaging technologies and artificial intelligence for early detection of Alzheimer’s Disease,” received a $150,000 Impact Grant from the Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation.

“We’re extremely grateful. Without the funding we couldn’t start the project. It’s a huge support for our study.”

While this project focuses on detecting Alzheimer’s, the researchers hope this type of work can be used to detect other diseases in the future, like Parkinson’s. The team would like to see their research evolve into a database or app that could help different clinicians collaborate on patient care.