A new brain health service in Hong Kong uses retinal imaging AI to predict the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, presented as the first of its kind in the world.
Humansa, a health and well-being center focused on longevity, offers this new service in collaboration with I-Cogitio Sciences, an eye image and a spin-off from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK).
What it is
The service provides a complete assessment of brain health fueled by AI and personalized lifestyle protocols. The IA of the I-Cognitio was developed and validated using around 13,000 images from the bottom of 648 Alzheimer’s patients and more than 3,000 patients with normal cognition. In a study Published in Lancet Digital Health Journal in 2022, technology has demonstrated precision between 80% and 92% to identify the risks of Alzheimer’s disease in multi -human data sets from different countries.
In addition, the brain health package provides preventive strategies based on an individual’s risk profile, lifestyle interventions and medical support, as well as longevity strategies that incorporate repair supplements and therapies.
Why it matters
Dementia probably affects one in three in three aged 85 and over in Asia-Pacific. In Hong Kong, a tenth of the population aged 70 and over takes care of this condition, with more than half of the cases allocated to Alzheimer’s disease.
Recent studies have shown that up to 45% of dementia cases can be prevented or delayed, highlighting the need for early detection. However, conventional cognitive tests and structural cerebral imaging are less precise, while very precise methods such as amyloid-pet scanning and cerebrospinal fluid tests are invasive and less accessible.
The study led by Cuhk tried to fill this gap by developing a deep learning model that offers “a simple and low cost and low -work approach to identify potential patients in Alzheimer’s disease in community environment with reasonable precision and sensitivity”.
The biggest trend
The latest research in Australia deepened the Connection between diseases and retina. Using AI and a set of eye image data, it has shown how much retinal thickness is reduced “highly associated” with multiple sclerosis and how retinal thinning is closely linked to a range of other neurodegenerative diseases and cardio-metabolic disorders.
At the start of this year, Japan and South Korea research projects also focused on the eyes to improve the screening of neurodevelopmental disorders. Yonsei University Health System Researchers have demonstrated the use of AI models to analyze photographs of the retinal background of children and identify their risk of hyperactivity disorder with attention deficit. In Japan, a researcher of Waseda University Used eye monitoring technology to show how predictable movement stimuli could be used as a potential behavioral marker for early detection of autism spectrum disorder.
Meanwhile, another Cuhk research team, in collaboration with the Beijing Tongren hospital, recently unveiled a AI generator model for the automated diagnosis of eye diseases. The model, pre-trained on a large ophthalmic database of 3.4 million images, has also proven to predict the presence of intracranial tumors from images of the eye.
At the same time as
“The retina is an extension of the brain, and thanks to the non -invasive photography of the background, we can detect changes in blood vessels and the nerves of the retina which are associated with Alzheimer’s disease. These changes can appear 10 to 15 years before the symptoms develop, which gives us a critical window for early risk. Vincent Mok, founding director of I-Cognitio and Mok Hing Yiu, professor of medicine in Cuhk, in a press release.