Dubai Health Center’s (DHA) artificial intelligence (AI) program has recorded an accuracy of 96 per cent in diagnosing retinal damage, a top official said.

DHA’s Dubai Diabetes Center’s provided the images that were fed into an AI program developed by Artelus, Dubai company focused in AI research in healthcare, said Dr M Hamed Farooqi, director of the Center.

“The more scans are fed to the program the more accurate the diagnosis will be. These positive results will be considered in possibly adopting this program at the center,” he added.

Dr Farooqi explained that along with this high prevalence of diabetes comes a high global prevalence of retinal damage as more than 93 million people are diagnosed with eye damage and 1 in 3 diabetics will develop diabetic retinopathy, according to international statistics.

He highlighted that diabetic retinopathy is a diabetes complication that affects eyes. It's caused by damage to the blood vessels of the light-sensitive tissue at the back of the eye. At first, diabetic retinopathy may cause no symptoms or only mild vision problems. Eventually, it can cause blindness.

He said to diagnose diabetic retinopathy regular retinal imaging is required and in some cases optical coherence tomography is also used. This imaging test provides cross-sectional images of the retina that show the thickness of the retina, which will help determine whether fluid has leaked into retinal tissue.

Dr Farooqi said that usually seven pictures of each eye are needed to diagnose retinal damage; this means that doctors need go through thousands of scans to diagnose patients.

Dr Farooqi said adopting AI will allow patients to receive their results faster leading to early detection, which can result in the better management of the condition. He said that AI will also reduce the overall cost of managing the retinal complications.

Meanwhile, Pradeep Walia, co-founder of Artelus LLC said that latest advances in AI would bring primary health screening to those most in need, and raise awareness in the masses. Early detection of Diabetic Retinopathy has shown to prevent blindness. By using AI and Machine Learning, and the use of cutting edge AI algorithms will enable the communities to offer large-scale screening at a fraction of the cost and save doctors a lot time.

DHA displayed its Artificial Intelligence (AI) in diagnosing Eye Disease initiative during its participation in the UAE Innovation Month 2018.

The UAE Innovation Month, which is the largest celebration of its kind that seeks to celebrate the best in ideas on innovation from the government and private sectors as well as from the public.

The second phase of the Dubai Diabetes Survey 2017 revealed that the total prevalence of Diabetes amongst Emiratis in Dubai is 19 per cent, while the total of undiagnosed diabetes cases of Emiratis is 11 percent and the rate of pre-diabetic Emiratis is 18.6 per cent. – TradeArabia News Service