Malarial Retinopathy Screening System for Improved Diagnosis of Cerebral Malaria

DESCRIPTION provided by applicant VisionQuest Biomedical and its collaborators have assembled a team of inter disciplinary scientists with considerable experience in automated retinal image analysis clinical ophthalmology with specialized research in malarial retinopathy MR and cerebral malaria diagnosis CM This team will develop and test an automated MR screening software system integrated with a low cost and portable retinal camera iRxCam developed by VisionQuest to assist and improve the accuracy of CM diagnosis CM is the most lethal clinical syndrome associated with malarial disease It affects more than million people annually and claims about deaths worldwide which include mortalities from African children As a consequence of high incidence of CM it is often misdiagnosed for other pathologies with similar symptoms leading to an incorrect treatment Once clinically suspected an accurate means to confirm the presence of CM or to investigate for a non malarial illness is critically needed to improve outcomes Since MR is greater than sensitive and specific to the presence of CM once clinically diagnosed retinal screening for MR represents an effective means to assist and improve the specificity of CM diagnosis Our proposed system will not replace the current CM diagnostic standard but instead will be added to it to increase the accuracy of CM diagnosis leading to a smaller number of false positive outcomes We propose a fully automated MR screening system that eliminates the need of clinical expertise and equipment as well as its low cost and portability make this system more accessible and affordable to affected population in Africa There are three specific aims to be achieved in phase I of this project First we will develop new methods and adapt previously developed methods for automated detection of retinal signs of MR and test them using a retrospective image data The second aim will focus on interfacing the automated software system with the low cost and portable retinal camera developed by VisionQuest Third we will test our software system on a retrospective image data obtained from diabetic retinopathy patients imaged with our camera to demonstrate the applicability of the software system on images obtained from our camera PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE VisionQuest Biomedical proposes a development of an automated retinal screening tool to detect malarial retinopathy MR in patients clinically suspected of cerebral malaria CM to assist and improve the accuracy of CM diagnosis preventing potentially avoidable deaths The software application will be integrated with a low cost and portable retinal camera developed by VisionQuest that addresses the accessibility requirement for the affected population