Spotting early signsĪssociate Professor van Wijngaarden's team is looking into the back of the eye to the light-sensitive retina for biomarkers - signs that indicate whether a person may develop a particular disease, or how likely existing disease might be to progress. "Just as astronomers can learn new things about distant galaxies by using a range of telescopes that are sensitive to different colours or wavelengths of light, we can learn new things about the retina with our camera," says Associate Professor van Wijngaarden. "Our scanning technology is similar to a standard eye photograph, but instead of using a standard flash of light, we use a rainbow-coloured flash."īy looking at the way that light of different colours is reflected from the retina, the team can see signs of Alzheimer's disease that cannot be detected with traditional imaging approaches.
"We can acquire a retinal image in a quarter of a second, without using drops to dilate pupils," he says. Tests that are currently available to detect the earliest signs of Alzheimer's disease - the collection and testing of spinal fluid, or highly specialised brain scans - are invasive, expensive and not widely available.Īssociate Professor van Wijngaarden and his multidisciplinary team of scientists, engineers and mathematicians have developed a new camera to detect signs of Alzheimer's disease in the eye. "The earliest changes in the brain occur 20 to 30 years before memory impairment, so there is a huge window of opportunity to detect people at risk of the disease at its early stages so treatment can be started when it is most likely to be effective," says Associate Professor van Wijngaarden. While it is exciting news that people with Alzheimer's disease may soon have treatment options, by the time most are diagnosed, they have already suffered irreversible brain damage. "There are two medications that show promise in slowing memory loss in Alzheimer's disease, something that was almost unthinkable even just a few years ago." Alzheimer's disease is the leading cause of dementia and is the third leading cause of death in Australia.ĭespite decades of research, progress towards treatments for Alzheimer's disease has been lacking - until recently - as CERA Deputy Director Associate Professor Peter van Wijngaarden explains.
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