Eyes reveal early Alzheimer's disease

Reduced blood capillaries in the back of the eye may be a new, noninvasive way to diagnose early cognitive impairment, the precursor to Alzheimer's disease, showed a study .

Researchers recruited 32 participants who had cognitive testing consistent with the forgetful type of cognitive impairment, and age-, gender- and race-matched them to subjects who tested as cognitively normal for their age. All individuals underwent eye imaging with OCT angiography.

They then detected the vascular changes in the human eye non-invasively, with an infrared camera and without the need for dyes or expensive MRI scanners.

It's known that patients with Alzheimer's have decreased retinal blood flow and vessel density.

"Once our results are validated, this approach could potentially provide an additional type of biomarker to identify individuals at high risk of progressing to Alzheimer's," said  a professor of ophthalmology.

Therapies for Alzheimer's are more effective if they are started before extensive brain damage and cognitive decline have occurred, added the Prof.

The researchers now hope to correlate these findings with other more standard but also more invasive types of Alzheimer's biomarkers as well as explore the longitudinal changes in the eye parameters in these subjects. 

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New system lets doctors see under patients' skin sans scalpel

Doctors could soon put down scalpels and peek under patients' skin, thanks to a new augmented reality system that displays internal anatomy right on the body, scientists say.
 

The system, called ProjectDR, allows medical images such as CT scans and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data to be displayed directly on a patient's body in a way that moves as the patient does.
 

"We wanted to create a system that would show clinicians a patient's internal anatomy within the context of the body," said a scientist.

Augmented reality (AR) is a live direct or indirect view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are "augmented" by computer-generated perceptual information.
 

The technology in the new system includes a motion tracking system using infrared cameras and markers on the patient's body, as well as a projector to display the images.
 

However, the really difficult part, the researcher said, is having the image track properly on the patient's body even as they shift and move.
 

The solution: custom software written by the researcher that gets all of the components working together.
 

"There are lots of applications for this technology, including in teaching, physiotherapy, laparoscopic surgery and even surgical planning," said the researcher, who developed the technology with fellow graduate student.
 

ProjectDR also has the capacity to present segmented images - for example, only the lungs or only the blood vessels - depending on what a clinician is interested in seeing.

Watts is working on refining ProjectDR to improve the system's automatic calibration and to add components such as depth sensors.
 

The next steps are testing the programme's viability in a clinical setting, said a professor.

 

"Soon, we will deploy ProjectDR in an operating room in a surgical simulation laboratory to test the pros and cons in real-life surgical applications," said the researcher. 

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