Eye2Gene and Heidelberg Engineering Announce Collaborative Partnership at ARVO 2024

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Eye2Gene™, a pioneering artificial intelligence National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) funded project based at the University College London Institute of Ophthalmology and Moorfields Eye Hospital, and Heidelberg Engineering, a global leader in ophthalmic imaging and data technologies, are thrilled to announce their collaborative partnership, set to be unveiled at the ARVO 2024 Annual Meeting in Seattle.

The collaboration marks a significant milestone in advancing ophthalmic diagnostics and personalized treatment approaches. By combining Eye2Gene's cutting-edge artificial intelligence algorithm with Heidelberg Engineering image quality and innovative workflow solutions, the partnership aims to revolutionize the care pathway for patients with inherited retinal disease.

At ARVO 2024, attendees can experience firsthand the power of this collaboration at Stand #1905 and learn more about the collaborative partnership between Eye2Gene and Heidelberg Engineering. The joint demonstration will showcase the seamless integration of Eye2Gene's AI algorithm for the prediction of inherited retinal disease genes using SPECTRALIS BluePeak Autofluorescence, cSLO Infrared and OCT images, with HEYEX 2’s Heidelberg AppWay. Researchers can uncover how images acquired with the SPECTRALIS can be interrogated by Eye2Gene to predict which gene is causing the inherited disease, offering a glimpse into the future of precision medicine in ophthalmology.

"Because inherited diseases are rare, they are challenging to diagnose for most non-specialists," said Nikolas Pontikos, lead researcher for Eye2Gene. “By training and validating a deep learning network with SPECTRALIS data that has been de-identified and securely obtained from specialist hospitals such as Moorfields, Oxford, Liverpool, and Tokyo Medical Center, we can engineer an expert AI solution that may play an important role in democratizing expert knowledge for inherited retinal diseases. Partnering with Heidelberg Engineering to make our solution available within Heidelberg AppWay will foster collaboration with researchers to further validate the science and give us a platform to transition the technology into clinical practice in future.”

Arianna Schoess Vargas, Managing Director of Heidelberg Engineering, is similarly excited by this innovative approach. "By combining the power of Heidelberg image quality and artificial intelligence, we are poised to empower eye care professionals with comprehensive insights into genetic diagnosis of inherited retinal disease, ultimately enhancing treatment outcomes and improving patient care,” she said.

The Eye2Gene research project team will be presenting two posters at ARVO 2024 detailing the science behind the solution:

Tuesday 1:15 - 3:00pm PT William Woof B0397: Creating the World’s Largest Dataset of Segmented Inherited Retinal Disease Features by Bootstrapping Manual Annotations with AI

Wednesday 10:30 - 12:15pm PT Bernardo Souza Mendes B0111: Extending Eye2Gene to Quantify the Phenotypic Diversity and Similarity of 63 Inherited Retinal Diseases Using an Embedding Approach

ARVO attendees are also encouraged to visit Stand #1905 to learn more about the collaborative partnership between Eye2Gene and Heidelberg Engineering, experience a live demonstration of HEYEX 2 with Heidelberg AppWay, and uncover how retinal scans can be interrogated to predict which gene is causing the inherited disease.

About Eye2Gene:

Eye2Gene is a research project based at the University College London Institute of Ophthalmology that has been funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) and Moorfields Eye Charity. Eye2Gene is currently a collaboration between University College London, Moorfields, Oxford, and Liverpool hospitals in the UK and the National Hospital Organization Tokyo Medical Center in Japan.

For more information about Eye2Gene, please visit https://eye2gene.com/.

About University College London Institute of Ophthalmology:

The UCL Institute of Ophthalmology is world-leading for research and teaching in ophthalmology and biomedical science. We deliver advanced ophthalmic research and education in partnership with Moorfields Eye Hospital.

For more information about UCL, please visit https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioo/about-us.

About Heidelberg Engineering:

Heidelberg Engineering optimizes imaging and data technologies to provide ophthalmic solutions and support learning that advances research and empowers clinicians who want to improve the holistic health of patients.

For more information about Heidelberg Engineering, please visit https://www.heidelbergengineering.com/de/heappway/.

About the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR):

The mission of the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) is to improve the health and wealth of the nation through research. NIHR is funded by the Department of Health and Social Care. Its work in low- and middle-income countries is principally funded through UK international development funding from the UK government.

For more information about NIHR, please visit: https://www.nihr.ac.uk/