AI Tech Can Help Prevent Vision Loss

Nvidia, a market leader in graphical computing, has been making strides in the artificial intelligence space. Digital Diagnostics a software-based AI medical imaging company, uses Nvidia tech to help those with retinopathy. It’s a condition caused by damage to blood vessels in the eye.

Those who suffer from diabetes are predisposed to this issue, especially if blood glucose levels are not kept at safe levels. About 60,000 people go blind every year as a result of diabetic retinopathy. But Digital Diagnostics hopes to change that. Founded by Michael Abramoff, a retinal surgeon, the company’s tech could serve as an early warning system.

The AI software is called IDx-DR, and it takes images of the back of the eye, anaylzes them and provides a diagnosis within a few minutes. If treatment is needed, it will refer patients to a specialist. It happens to be the only FDA-approved autonomous AI tech that doesn’t require physician oversight. And it can be placed in any environment, and still get the job done.

“IDx-DR enables diagnostic tests to be completed in easily accessible settings like drugstores or primary care providers’ offices, rather than only at ophthalmology clinics,” said John Bertrand, CEO at Digital Diagnostics.

IDx-DR uses Nvidia GPUS, and its deep learning pipeline is built using the Nvidia CuDNN library for high performance GPU-accelerated operations. The AI is trained to recognize problems based on a pre-defined set of images of DR-confirmed cases. Training is done using Amazon EC2 P3 instances using Nvidia V100 Tensor Core GPUs.

This system has already been deployed in more than 20 locations across the US, with the target of helping as many people as possible. But this isn’t the end game, the company is also working on systems that diagnose glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration. It is also plans on providing solutions that extend beyond eye-related conditions.