PallorMetrics: Software for Automatically Quantifying Optic Disc Pallor in Fundus Photographs, and Associations With Peripapillary RNFL Thickness

Samuel Gibbon, Graciela Muniz-Terrera, Fabian S. L. Yii, Charlene Hamid, Simon Cox, Ian J. C. Maccormick, Andrew J. Tatham, Craig Ritchie, Emanuele Trucco, Baljean Dhillon, Thomas J. MacGillivray

Neuro-ophthalmology (2024)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1167/tvst.13.5.20

Summary

In dementia, nerve cells in the brain called neurons stop functioning properly, lose connections with other neurons, and eventually die prematurely. The eye is a window into the human body where we can easily study the nerves of the retina which might reflect the health and condition of similar, but less accessible, tissues in the brain.  In this paper we explain how we have developed software that quantifies the appearance of the optic nerve head in fundus images as a marker of loss of nerve tissue that makes this feature appear lighter and paler. Our technique could potentially become a straightforward test to monitor for change over time and spot people most at risk of developing dementia later in life. In turn, this could help target the recruitment of clinical trials of new treatments at the most suitable individuals.

PREVENT Dementia programme: baseline demographic, lifestyle, imaging and cognitive data from a midlife cohort study investigating risk factors for dementia

Craig W Ritchie, Katie Bridgeman, Sarah Gregory, John T O’Brien, Samuel O Danso, Maria-Eleni Dounavi, Isabelle Carriere, David Driscoll, Robert Hillary, Ivan Koychev, Brian Lawlor, Lorina Naci, Li Su, Audrey Low, Elijah Mak, Paresh Malhotra, Jean Manson, Riccardo Marioni, Lee Murphy, Georgios Ntailianis, William Stewart, Graciela Muniz-Terrera, Karen Ritchie

Brain Communications (2024)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.numecd.2023.07.020

Summary

The PREVENT cohort offers a novel dataset to explore midlife risk factors and early signs of neurodegenerative disease. The  cohort includes 700 participants recruited across five sites in the United Kingdom and Ireland (Cambridge, Dublin, Edinburgh, London and Oxford). At baseline, participants had a mean age of 51.2 years, with the majority female (n=433, 61.9%). There was a near equal distribution of participants with and without a parental history of dementia (51.4% vs 48.6%) and a relatively high prevalence of APOEɛ4 carriers (n=264, 38.0%). Participants were highly educated (16.7 ± 3.44 years of education), and mainly of European Ancestry (n=672, 95.9%). This paper provides an overview of the study protocol and presents the first summary results from the initial baseline data to describe the cohort.