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Annual Review 2023
Space-age scan for Alzheimer’s disease
A collaboration between eye researchers and astronomers to develop an eye scan that can combine three Alzheimer’s disease tests into one has been awarded an Ideas Grant from the National Health and Medical Research Council.
A team led by Professor Peter van Wijngaarden has received a National Health and Medical Research Council Ideas Grant to expand research to develop an eye test to identify Alzheimer’s disease.
Three separate brain scans are currently needed to obtain three warning signs of Alzheimer’s disease and information about a patient’s brain health – but if the research is successful this could be replaced by a single, simple eye test.
“Our research will compare the effectiveness of our novel eye-scanning technology with state-of-the-art brain-scanning technologies to detect Alzheimer’s disease,’’ Professor van Wijngaarden says.
To analyse the enormous wealth of data that comes from these images, his team is collaborating with astronomer Associate Professor Edward Taylor from the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing at Swinburne University of Technology.
“With many emerging treatments for Alzheimer’s disease on the horizon, a simple test would streamline clinical trials, and help to identify people who may benefit from early treatment,” says Professor van Wijngaarden.
This story was originally published in People in focus: Annual Review 2023.