Africa-Press – Sierra-Leone. In their study, the researchers broached the possibility of using retinal image as “a screening tool for risk stratification and delivery of tailored interventions.”
A team of scientists has established that one day it may be possible to determine whether a person faces a risk of early death simply by scanning their retina.
Detailing their findings in the British Journal of Ophthalmology, the researchers explored the prospect of using the gap between retina’s age – predicted by deep learning – and a person’s chronological age, to help gauge mortality risk.
According to Science Alert, the machine learning algorithm employed by the team was accurate enough to “predict the age of nearly 47,000 middle-aged and elderly adults in the United Kingdom within a bracket of 3.5 years.”
As the media outlet notes, some 1,871 of these individuals have died in about over a decade since said retina images were taken, and it appears that those with “older-looking retinas” were more likely to perish.
They were unable, however, to establish a link between retinal health and dementia, since only 20 people in their research died due to that condition, the media outlet points out.
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