The VAMPIRE program: what can the retina tell us about our health, and how can we find out?

Abstract:  An increasing body of evidence is pointing to links between the retinalblood vessels and high-incidence systemic diseases like diabetes and its complications, dementia and cardiovascular problems. Identifying and using such links for healthcare poses many interdisciplinary challenges. Examples include measuring properties of the retinal blood vessels automatically and reliably from images of the retina; discovering the most relevant retinal features (measurements) to determine disease risk or progression; and quantifying the role of retinal features for disease prediction within a large pool of phenotyipic and genotypic information. This talk will present an overview of the approaches and solutions developed in the VAMPIRE research program, an international initiative created in the early 2000s by the Universities of Edinburgh and Dundee.