AI Can Spot Parkinson's 7 Years Before Clinical Diagnosis, Study Finds

Parkinson's disease is a progressive neurological disorder that primarily affects movement. Detecting Parkinson's disease involves a combination of clinical evaluation, medical history assessment, and specialized tests.

But British researchers might have made advancements in the early detection of Parkinson's disease, potentially enabling diagnosis several years earlier.

Scientists from University College London and Moorfields Eye Hospital have suggested that through eye scans, it might be possible to identify indications of Parkinson's disease up to seven years before an official diagnosis.

According to a news release, this is the first time anyone has shown these findings several years before diagnosis, and these results were made possible by the largest study to date on retinal imaging in Parkinson's disease.

The study, published today in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, identified markers of Parkinson's disease in eye scans with the help of artificial intelligence (AI). Its analysis of the AlzEye dataset was repeated using the wider UK Biobank database (healthy volunteers), which replicated the discoveries. The use of these two large, powerful datasets has enabled the team to identify these subtle markers, even though Parkinson's disease has a relatively low prevalence (0.1-0.2% of the population). The generation of the AlzEye dataset was enabled by INSIGHT, the world's largest database of retinal images and associated clinical data.

The use of data from eye scans has previously revealed signs of other neurodegenerative conditions, including Alzheimer's, multiple sclerosis, and, most recently, schizophrenia, in an emerging and exciting field of research referred to as "oculomics".

Eye scans and eye data have also been able to reveal a propensity for high blood pressure; cardiovascular disease, including strokes; and diabetes.

Lead author Dr Siegfried Wagner (UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and Moorfields Eye Hospital), who is also principal investigator of several other AlzEye studies, said: "I continue to be amazed by what we can discover through eye scans. While we are not yet ready to predict whether an individual will develop Parkinson's, we hope that this method could soon become a pre-screening tool for people at risk of the disease.

"Finding signs of a number of diseases before symptoms emerge means that, in the future, people could have the time to make lifestyle changes to prevent some conditions from arising, and clinicians could delay the onset and impact of life-changing neurodegenerative disorders."