AI Foundation Model for Generalizable Disease Detection from Retinal Images

AAO Artificial Intelligence Committee Member Dr. Pearse Keane discusses newly published research on Retina Foundation (RETFound), one of the first AI foundation models to be developed for a healthcare setting. This open-source AI model was trained using 1.6 million retinal images and has been finetuned to perform more than 10 distinct tasks so far, including ophthalmology tasks like screening for diabetic retinopathy or glaucoma and predicting disease progression. It has also shown promise for predicting certain non-ocular health events. 

Financial Disclosures: Dr. Pearse Keane discloses financial relationships with Bayer Healthcare, Novartis Pharmaceuticals, Roche Diagnostics, Topcon Medical Systems (Consultant/Advisor, Lecture Fees/Speakers Bureau); Heidelberg Engineering (Lecture Fees/Speakers Bureau, Grant Support); Allergan (Lecture Fees/Speakers Bureau); Apellis Pharmaceuticals, BitFount, DeepMind Technologies (Consultant/Advisor).