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Eye scans detect signs of Parkinson’s disease up to seven years before diagnosis

moorfields.nhs.uk

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Re: Eye scans detect signs of Parkinson’s disease up to seven years before diagnosis

#61

Post by i_cannot_hack »

playto wrote: post #46
devindotcom wrote: post #25

I recall two companies working on this - RightEye and Neuralight: https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/17/righteyes-portable-eye-tra... https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/24/neuralight-aims-to-track-a... Probably there are more by now. As I recall this data is great for essentially saying "you should go get a real test." No one is diagnosing - just saying that a certain, say, eye movement slowness is correlated and you can det…

> say, eye movement slowness It’s not just movement. Retinal tissue develops from the same embryonic tissue as the brain. They probably looked at structure, vasculature. The best anecdote in this space- nobody with congenital blindness has developed schizophrenia.

That anecdote is not necessarily true. The combination world be very rare even if blindness offers no protection, and it seems to simply not have been studied enough to be confident those rare individuals have been identified as such and published as case reports.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/z9Syf3pGffpvHwfr4/i-m-mildly...

Re: Eye scans detect signs of Parkinson’s disease up to seven years before diagnosis

#62

Post by po8tin »

devindotcom wrote: post #25

I recall two companies working on this - RightEye and Neuralight: https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/17/righteyes-portable-eye-tra... https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/24/neuralight-aims-to-track-a... Probably there are more by now. As I recall this data is great for essentially saying "you should go get a real test." No one is diagnosing - just saying that a certain, say, eye movement slowness is correlated and you can det…

Tomorrow; new Worldcoin orbs with Parkinson’s detection!

Re: Eye scans detect signs of Parkinson’s disease up to seven years before diagnosis

#63

Post by deepsun »

> Using a type of AI known as ‘machine learning’, computers are now able to uncover hidden information about the whole body from these images alone.

So now computers use AI to do something, interesting...

I always liked how it's always "AI did X" or "AI discovered Y", but never a "crane built a building".

Re: Eye scans detect signs of Parkinson’s disease up to seven years before diagnosis

#64

Post by srcreigh »

i_cannot_hack wrote: post #61
playto wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> say, eye movement slowness It’s not just movement. Retinal tissue develops from the same embryonic tissue as the brain. They probably looked at structure, vasculature. The best anecdote in this space- nobody with congenital blindness has developed schizophrenia.

That anecdote is not necessarily true. The combination world be very rare even if blindness offers no protection, and it seems to simply not have been studied enough to be confident those rare individuals have been identified as such and published as case reports. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/z9Syf3pGffpvHwfr4/i-m-mildly...

It’s not an anecdote, it’s the idea that there are no anecdotes.

That is a much more risky idea in the first place, and your link provides quite a few such anecdotes.

Re: Eye scans detect signs of Parkinson’s disease up to seven years before diagnosis

#65

Post by parekhnish »

efitz wrote: post #45

So if this works then the benefits will be amazing. I am skeptical for three reasons. First, the article goes on about the eyes being “windows” to the body and introduces us to the new “science” of “oculomics”. That might be journalist license but it smells of pseudoscience; phrenology anyone? Second, the idea that any image of an eye can be used to diagnose lots of different neurological conditions like schizophreni…

(Disclaimer: I worked in retinal imagery AI for a few years)

I understand why this seems like pseudoscience, but I'd like to explain the assumption better. As the article states,

> a scan of the retina is the only non-intrusive way to view layers of cells below the skin’s surface.

As an extension, you could also make the case for being able to view the nervous system via such imagery. As stated in [1],

> Despite its peripheral location, the retina or neural portion of the eye, is actually part of the central nervous system.

The theory is that such a non-invasive of visualizing crucial parts of the inner body opens up a "window" into noticing such biomarkers well before the common-but-late-stage symptoms are noticeable.

As for your gripe about:

> let’s dump medical records and retina images into a neural network and see what correlates

, I agree that this requires more careful analysis, but I assume that will happen as part of clinical trials of any such technology. The first foray, which is more experimental than anything concrete, is what this article seems to suggest.

[1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK10885/#:~:text=Despite...).

Re: Eye scans detect signs of Parkinson’s disease up to seven years before diagnosis

#66

Post by Gnarl »

Meh. German naturopathic healing practitioners ("heilpraktiker") have been detecting diseases early for centuries. Its called "iris analysis". The idea being, that the iris is divided into sections, each representing a part of the body and subtle but visible changes in a section suggest onset of disease in the connected area of the body. Acupuncture also recognizes such "microsystems" on the body.

Re: Eye scans detect signs of Parkinson’s disease up to seven years before diagnosis

#67

Post by hacoo »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #42
kadoban wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If nothing else, it could allow you to make different decisions in your life. If my mind is going to be gone in 10 years, I'm sure as shit not saving for long term retirement anymore.

> If my mind is going to be gone in 10 years Parkinsons affects motor control, not mental functioning. The point still stands -- if I got a diagnosis I would be less likely to embark on learning to play the piano, and I'd start educating myself on the disease. EDIT: I'll correct myself. It primarily affects motor control, but late in the disease it can affect cognition.

Every case is different , but Parkinson’s is often associated with severe dementia that can manifest fairly quickly. I saw this happen to a close family member unfortunately.

Re: Eye scans detect signs of Parkinson’s disease up to seven years before diagnosis

#69

Post by opportune »

Check out the actual paper: https://n.neurology.org/content/neurology/early/2023/08/21/W...

There is significant overlap in the distributions of prodromal and control Parkinson’s patients even for the measure with the strongest signal. While some values for that measure seem to be almost conclusive markets of Parkinson’s, there are ranges in which the overlap is enough to make it not useful as a sole measure without having a high false positive rate.

Seems promising at catching a decent proportion of Parkinson’s super early, but I don’t think by itself this could yield both a good false positive and false negative rate. Keep in mind this is an ebullient press release summarizing a more conservative publication

Re: Eye scans detect signs of Parkinson’s disease up to seven years before diagnosis

#70

Post by ShamelessC »

ianbutler wrote: post #55
ShamelessC wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I don't hate your comment because you're against VC or business or because you're a cynic, I hate it because it's not going to create good or interesting discussion because its a generic outrage rant with nothing new brought to the table that literally every one on this site hasn't heard before.

Ya got me there guy!
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