Grant: Collaborative Health Research Projects

Alzheimers disease is a slowly evolving neurodegenerative disorder that ultimately leading todementia. It is the most common cause of dementia, affecting millions worldwide, with no cureavailable at this time. One of the main issues with developing new therapies is the fact thatAlzheimer is usually diagnosed based on cognitive impairments, a diagnosis made late in theevolution of the disease. This proposal aims to develop a non-invasive detection toolexploiting commonalities between Alzheimer biomarkers present both in the brain and theeye. Our main goal is to identify signs of the disease earlier using a test that could be doneroutinely during an ophthalmology examination. We will develop methods combiningmultispectral retinal imaging with image processing to identify biomarkers of amyloid plaqueaccumulation in the retina and correlate results with brain PET amyloid imaging.