A team led by Siegfried Wagner and Pearse Keane of Moorfields Eye Hospital and UCL Institute of Ophthalmology (and spanning UCL institutions) has identified markers that indicate the presence of Parkinson’s disease in patients on average seven years before clinical presentation. This is the first time anyone has shown these findings several years before diagnosis, and these results were made possible by the largest study to date on retinal imaging in Parkinson’s disease.

The study, published today in Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, identified markers of Parkinson’s in eye scans with the help of artificial intelligence (AI). Its analysis of the AlzEye dataset was repeated using the wider UK Biobank database (healthy volunteers), which replicated the discoveries. The use of these two large, powerful datasets has enabled the team to identify these subtle markers, even though Parkinson’s disease has a relatively low prevalence (0.1-0.2% of the population). Generation of the AlzEye dataset was enabled by INSIGHT, the world’s largest database of retinal images and associated clinical data.

The use of data from eye scans has previously revealed signs of other neurodegenerative condi