Deep Learning of the Retina Enables Phenome- and Genome-Wide Analyses of the Microvasculature.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The microvasculature, the smallest blood vessels in the body, has key roles in maintenance of organ health and tumorigenesis. The retinal fundus is a window for human in vivo noninvasive assessment of the microvasculature. Large-scale complementary machine learning-based assessment of the retinal vasculature with phenome-wide and genome-wide analyses may yield new insights into human health and disease.

Methods

We used 97 895 retinal fundus images from 54 813 UK Biobank participants. Using convolutional neural networks to segment the retinal microvasculature, we calculated vascular density and fractal dimension as a measure of vascular branching complexity. We associated these indices with 1866 incident International Classification of Diseases-based conditi

SUBMITTER: Zekavat SM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8746912 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature