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[Title card animation: Dementia Australia Research Foundation - Diagnose]
[Dr Seyyed Mojtaba Golzan, University of Technology Sydney]
Dr Mojtaba: I am Dr Mojtaba Golzan, and I'm a senior lecturer here at the University of Technology Sydney. I started my PhD in 2009, where I was mainly focused at looking at the relationship between eye and the brain. My main area of research was to look into how we could use the eye to look at specific changes that are happening in the brain. Now, that led me to develop a new image in ways of extracting some information that the eye that can potentially be linked to the brain.
The Australia Dementia Research Foundation funded my postdoctoral research where I was solely focused on exploring this connection. So the question is what can the eye tell us about dementia in the brain? Now, what I was mainly focused on was to look at these tiny blood vessels at the back of the eye, which we called the retina, and how by assessing and measuring certain characteristics of those vessels can yield some information about the brain. And by doing that, you could look at different features of the eye and capture those features, but the problem is the way we could assess and look in the brain is either expensive, because you need MRI or PET scans, or they're not accessible, they're not available everywhere. That's where the eye can offer a great alternative because they're cheaper to perform a scan, and then they're more accessible, the devices that are needed to actually scan the eye.
The Dementia Australia Research Foundation helped me focus on exploring this connection further, the eye and the brain connection. Now, I was interested at looking at a particular blood vessel and structural changes that occur in the eye, and how I could connect that to the brain in people with dementia, and specifically Alzheimer's disease. So, my hypothesis is that the blood vessels in the eye hold valuable information about the blood vessels in the brain, and the reason for that is the artery that supplies blood to the brain also supply blood to the eye.
During my fellowship, I focused on patients who had Alzheimer's disease and also patients who had subjective complaints about memory loss. What we did was to measure some markers using PET scans and MRI from their brains, and also, at the same time, we looked at their blood vessel and structural changes in the eye. What we found was that there's a strong correlation between what happens in the blood vessels in the eye, and also some features and markers of Alzheimer's disease in the brain. So, what my research showed was that there were changes in the blood vessels that occur parallel to the brain. Now, that has the potential for early diagnosis as well. But the question I always get is why would you want to have an early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease? The simple answer to that is, yes, true. We don't have any cure for it, but we do have interventions that could delay the symptoms of it. So, if we had a way that we could tell someone, the chances of you developing Alzheimer's disease is high, then we could simply bring forward those interventions and start early on.
So, what are the outcomes of the research? Yes, people are going to develop dementia. However, for those who are at risk, early identification means early intervention, and early intervention leads to delayed onset, and ultimately, an improved quality of life for those who may develop dementia in the future.
More recently, I've been working on designing and developing new technology that could be rolled out to pretty much all clinicians around Australia, and that can be used to capture the same amount of information that we were able to do as part of the fellowship. This is very important in rural and remote areas where access to very expensive and bulky ophthalmic devices are not available. This provides an opportunity that for every Australian to be scanned at their local GP or medical centre.
What this device allows me to do is to collect images and videos from the back of the eye, and then use the data to develop artificial intelligence algorithms that will eventually help us identify people who are at risk of developing dementia. At the start of my career, I wasn't working in dementia. However, a fellowship from the Dementia Australia Research Foundation allowed me to move into this space, and I'm glad it did because dementia is a leading cause of death in Australia, and I'm really glad to be a part of the working force helping solve this medical problem.
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This research is supported by:
Alzheimer’s Australia Dementia Research Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellowship
Graduate School of Health, University Technology Sydney
Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Macquarie University
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Dementia Australia Research Foundation:
A cure is just the beginning
If you would like to see dementia research make real impact, donate today:
1300 636 679
www.dementia.org.au/donate-research
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