Can Computers Fight Blindness?
Stare at a computer screen for long enough and you might feel like you’re going blind. But researchers from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratories think that computers could actually help prevent blindness. The researchers’ startup, Automated Medical Diagnostics (AMDx), is developing software that detects early signs of diabetic retinopathy (an eye disease that can cause blurred vision and blindness) by comparing digital photos of a patient’s retina to images representing progressive stages of the disease. –> The process is deceptively complicated–researchers spent 5 years working on an algorithm that can effectively compare retinal images to a 20,000 photo database. And even that doesn’t diagnose the disease. Rather, it alerts doctors when a patient needs to be sent to a specialist for further testing. AMDx’s software is currently being tested in clinics in Mississippi and Tennessee. Pictures of patient retinas are sent via the web to AMDx’s servers, where they ar
