Pilot Study on a Systems Medicine Approach to Primary Open-Angle Glaucoma

Vision loss and blindness bring about drastic changes in the lives of those affected, leading to a significant reduction in quality of life comparable to that caused by malignant tumors or severe cardiovascular events. Glaucoma is the second leading cause of irreversible blindness worldwide. A significant percentage of glaucoma patients become blind in both eyes; many suffer severe visual field loss in both eyes before reaching the stage of blindness. It is important to examine the pathophysiology of glaucoma while taking into account the effects of systemic factors in order to enable improved diagnostic approaches using new predictive biomarkers. To this end, the ICM is developing segmentation and texture analysis methods for interpreting patients’ image data measured using optical coherence tomography.