An Investigation on the Causal Relationship between Retinal Imaging Features and Diagnostic Markers of Alzheimer’s Disease in Animal Models of Cognitive Impairment

Description

It is well known that the retina is the only easily accessible part of the central nervous system. Many changes in the brain are also reflected in the retina. Compared to inputs of existing Alzheimer’s disease (AD) diagnosing methods (e.g., PET, MRI, indirect cognitive test), the retina images are easily acquired and potentially contribute to more accurate diagnosing. It would be aground-breaking discovery if the complex diagnostic tests for AD could be replaced by automated diagnosis using retina images. In long term, this project may serve millions of elderly people. However, it is still far from sure that the retina does offer sufficient information to reliably diagnose AD. This project aims to demonstrate the connections between AD and retina imagesthrough detection of statistical dependences on invasive techniques currently used in diagnosing AD, particular characteristics of AD disease, and biomarkers obtained by the analysis of retina images.