Grant: Collaborative Health Research Projects (NSERC partnered)

Alzheimer's disease is a slowly evolving neurodegenerative disorder that ultimately leading to dementia. It is the most common cause of dementia, affecting millions worldwide, with no cure available at this time. One of the main issues with developing new therapies is the fact that Alzheimer is usually diagnosed based on cognitive impairments, a diagnosis made late in the evolution of the disease. This proposal aims to develop a non-invasive detection tool exploiting commonalities between Alzheimer biomarkers present both in the brain and the eye. Our main goal is to identify signs of the disease earlier using a test that could be done routinely during an ophthalmology examination. We will develop methods combining multispectral retinal imaging with image processing to identify biomarkers of amyloid plaque accumulation in the retina and correlate results with brain PET amyloid imaging.