I(eye)-SCREEN: A real-world AI-based infrastructure for screening and prediction of progression in age-related macular degeneration (AMD) providing accessible shared care

The aim of I(eye)-Screen is to develop an artificial intelligence (AI)-based diagnostic decision support system for screening and monitoring of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) at an early stage before vision loss occurs. Late AMD is the leading cause of legal blindness >50-years with 110 mio individuals at risk.

The multidisciplinary consortium brings together a network of clinical retina experts, computer scientists working at the cutting edge of AI development, an infrastructure of community-based opticians/optometrists and an SME experienced in digital platform performance to develop innovative and trustworthy AI tools for broad, real-time AMD screening and monitoring via a cloud-based infrastructure with unlimited access.

To achieve the ambitious goal of finding “the needle in the haystack” in early AMD, Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT), a high-resolution, effortless imaging modality is used providing a detailed characterization of the retina in extensive volumetric scans.

Breakthrough AI approaches for medical imaging will be developed to enable data-efficient and robust learning from sparse longitudinal OCT data to systematically analyse dense data volumes and identify (sub)clinical markers of disease activity.

Clinical sites throughout Europe will collect a longitudinal cohort serving for calibrating and fine-tuning algorithms using the high-end OCT device available at eye clinics.

Innovative AI technology will then be created to transfer the detection and monitoring tools to low-cost devices used in next door opticians’/optometrists’ offices.

The timing of the project perfectly fits the recent regulatory approval of the first therapy to halt progression of the major atrophic type of AMD.

The resulting AI-based “shared care” strategy offers unrestricted accessibility to vision-maintaining care with greatest health equity and provides a role model for screening for systemic, cardiovascular and neurodegenerative disease reflecting retinal biomarkers.