HERALD-Hyperspectral retinal imaging for non-invasive detection of amyloid- β in patients with Alzheimer disease

The Herald project aims at developing a method to detect amyloid beta in the retina as a sign of onset of Alzheimer’s Disease, using an affordable hyperspectral camera combined with conventional ophthalmological imaging devices. The hyperspectral retinal imaging setup consists of a compact hyperspectral snapshot camera and a standard fundus camera. Hyperspectral images were taken of 39 subjects, both AD patients and controls. Using these images, a classifier that differentiates AD subjects from controls was trained and evaluated. Adding OCT images slightly increased the performance of the classifier. This is a first step towards application in clinical practice.