. "If someone learned their risk was higher than expected, they could be prescribed statins or offered another intervention," she said.Circulatory diseases such as cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease, heart failure, and stroke are the leading causes of illness and mortality globally. Researchers suggest that although numerous risk frameworks exist, these aren't always able to accurately identify those who will go on to develop or die of circulatory diseases.
They applied Quartz firstly to scan the retinal images of 88,052 people who are UK Biobank participants between the ages of 40 and 69, and later to investigate the retinal images of 7,411 participants of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer -Norfolk study, who were aged between 48 and 92.
The health of the subjects has been tracked for seven to nine years. The results show that the width, curviness, and width variation of veins and arteries in the retinas are important predictors of death from circulatory disease in men, while in women, artery area and width and vein curviness and width variation contributed to risk prediction.Additionally, researchers discovered a strong correlation between the retinal data calculated by Quartz and cardiovascular disease, deaths, and strokes.
"AI-enabled vasculometry risk prediction is fully automated, low cost, non-invasive, and has the potential for reaching a higher proportion of the population in the community because of 'high street' availability and because blood sampling or [blood pressure measurement] are not needed," added the researchers.