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Changes in fundus image color may signal undiagnosed disease

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AALBORG, Denmark — Deviation of a patient’s fundus image color from what is expected for the patient’s age may potentially be used to identify undiagnosed disease, a study here found.

Color deviation may indicate causes other than age of increased light absorption by the lens, such as cumulative exposure to hyperglycemia in diabetic patients, the study authors said. This might help identify undiagnosed type 2 diabetes in the general population.

Dr. Bernhard M. Ege and colleagues with the Institute for Electronic Systems, Aalborg University, evaluated a total of 102 digitized fundus images from 102 healthy subjects between the ages of 7 and 94 years. The images were used to build a model for estimating the patients’ ages based on the color content of the images.

According to their report, the ages of the participants could be estimated to within approximately 16 years. The authors wrote the variation could be considerably reduced through repeated analysis of photographs from the same examination.

The report was published in the journal Acta Ophthalmologica Scandinavica.