Africa Oculomics Research Programme: harnessing ocular biomarkers to transform health (360G-Wellcome-328709_Z_25_Z)

Our vision is to unlock the potential of Oculomics to better understand, predict, diagnose and manage systemic and ocular disease, to improve health outcomes and equity for African populations. Oculomics is the emerging field of study into relationships between the eyes and systemic health and disease. It is being transformed by advances in high-resolution ocular imaging coupled with recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI), particularly deep learning. We will conduct ocular phenotyping and imaging studies, repeated five years apart, nested within an existing general population cohort in Uganda. In parallel we will collect clinical, laboratory and image phenotyping data for systemic health states (cardiovascular, neurological, renal, liver, musculoskeletal, mental health), alongside genotyping data. We will use these data to develop, tune and validate AI foundation models to analyse images from this African population for multiple systemic disease and ocular diagnostic tasks. We will investigate cross-sectional and longitudinal relationships between ocular biomarkers and major health conditions, to determine their diagnostic, prognostic and predictive potential. Finally, we will conduct prospective studies to investigate the utility of oculomics supported diagnostics in general health care settings, assessing the suitability and performance of AI-assisted diagnosis, when paired with novel low-cost imaging equipment.