A-Eye Scope: A standardized, scalable tool for point-of-care, early stage dementia pre-screening

Cambridge Vision Technology (CVT) has recently developed at-home retinal imaging technology for screening and early detection of chronic retinal diseases. There is a large, growing, body of evidence for retinal vasculature being the strongest-indicator of early-onset dementia; retinal biomarkers can show signs 10-20 years before the onset of symptoms. There have also been great advances recently in the use of computer vision to automatically assess the vasculature in these images to diagnose the prevalence of Alzheimer's and other neurological diseases. Early and cost-effective diagnosis is crucial to the next stage of treatment and drug development. Current diagnostic modalities for AD are limited by cost (MRI or PET), invasiveness (CSF), or suboptimal specificity and sensitivity (genetic markers, serum amyloid). Hence, CVT is submitting a translation project aimed at tailoring our at-home imaging technology specifically to aid in the development of treatments for Dementia patients. This involves the repurposing of our hardware device and software platform to facilitate the widespread capture and processing of retinal images and measurement of biomarkers in patients with all stages of Dementia.Long term, we intend to make this technology available as a widespread diagnostic tool for use in clinic. Because of it's automated methodology and low unit cost, CVT's solution is an exciting candidate to be deployed to GP/point-of-care testing for large-scale screening programmes throughout the UK.