Freely available web-based tool created by Addenbrooke’s eye specialists could change glaucoma treatment worldwide
A web-based tool that could change how glaucoma patients are treated worldwide has been developed by Addenbrooke’s eye specialists.
Glaucoma is the most frequent cause of irreversible blindness and is characterised by cupping of the optic nerve head and visual-field damage.
But determining if patients have mild, moderate or severe disease is difficult - and evaluating visual fields is time consuming, subjective and ambiguous, which hampers medical management of patients and makes it difficult for them to access the right levels of social support.
Cambridge Eye Research Centre ophthalmologist Dr Nikhil Jain and former student Dr Arun Thirunavukarasu have now devised a web-based solution called the Glaucoma Field Defect Classifier (GFDC), which classified with perfect accuracy mild, moderate and severe glaucomatous field defects.
They presented the app, developed with a multi-disciplinary team, to more than 40 guests at the first Cambridge Eye Research Centre Symposium.
The app is now freely hosted online for clinicians and researchers to use with glaucoma patients.
The significance of the breakthrough meant that it has also been presented at three other international conferences this year and featured in the international peer-reviewed journal Digital Medicine.
The team’s paper says: “Risk stratification of glaucoma patients is a priority when timely glaucoma care is challenged by increasing demand for services. External research teams are welcome to use and adapt the code and web-application for the benefit of patients and ophthalmologists.
“Reducing subjectivity of perimetry analysis without compromising clinical accuracy and precision may help ensure glaucoma patients receive equitable and optimal care.”
Dr Jain and Dr Thirunavukarasu presented the app at the Royal College of Ophthalmologists Annual Congress and to ARVO 2024, a global research conference in Seattle, a week earlier.
Dr Thirunavukarasu also spoke about their work at the National Foundation Doctors’ Presentation Day in Bristol, where he was awarded a prize for best presentation. He is now an academic foundation doctor at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and a clinical research fellow at Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences & Big Data Institute, University of Oxford.
Cambridge Eye Research Centre director Prof Rupert Bourne, who is a consultant ophthalmic surgeon and glaucoma specialist, and the Eastern region ophthalmology clinical lead for NHS Improvement, said: “In the UK, we under-report vision impairment, which can deny some patients the services they need.
“Arun and Nik presented their work at a global eye research conference in Seattle to wide acclaim, and Arun won the National Foundation Doctors’ Presentation Day prize, and both will be taking this work to the Royal College of Ophthalmologists Annual Congress.
“It is an excellent example of very high quality international research by our trainees, which has a direct patient benefit.”
It is not the first breakthrough at Addenbrooke’s that could alter eye treatment worldwide. As the Cambridge Independent reported earlier this year, a pioneering cataract test called Neocam, invented by an Addenbrooke’s consultant Dr Louise Allen, is the subject of a national study and the aim is to test 140,000 newborn babies by August 2025.
