In our eyes, Google’s software sees heart attack risk

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/02/19/google-used-artificial-intelligence-to-predict-heart-attacks-with-the-human-eye

by helloworld • 8 years ago

52 46 8 years ago

washingtonpost.com

carbocation• 8 years ago

As my PI notes, a lot of the success here can be explained by the model's excellent ability to determine age from the images of the retina. https://twitter.com/skathire/status/965661596503638016

This is quite good age detection - other efforts that I've seen (from face images, rather than retina images) are +/- 5 years, whereas this paper gets age to within +/- 3 years or so.

The fact that the model automatically detects anatomical features that humans recognize as being important is promising for a variety of applications, I think.

logronoide8• 8 years ago

Any optician can do exactly the same thing during a simple check of your eyes. In this case I can’t see the benefit of this type of screening. The tool used by the optician is just a cheap lantern, but only the tool needed by the computer is way more expensive.

ridgeguy2• 8 years ago

Perhaps a cheap lens/illuminator attachment for smartphones could be engineered for retinal imaging. If this method could be adapted to phones, many more people could be checked at low cost.

logronoide8• 8 years ago

It already exists. Most opticians take a image of your retina and store it in the cloud for further analysis and tracking the evolution.

In Spain (where I live) most opticians do not charge anything for this test, because it’s a minimal part of a typical prescription.

ceejayoz6• 8 years ago

I'd suspect the tools will eventually be dramatically cheaper than a trained optician. Put it in a pharmacy, grocery store, or other central location and people could screen weekly instead of once every couple years (assuming they even see an optician).

logronoide8• 8 years ago

As I have explained before, in Spain an optician does not charge anything for it because it’s ridiculously simple and it’s a small percentage of the effort that an optician needs to do for a prescription.

This test is different of a blood test for example. You don’t need to control the evolution weekly, or even monthly.

This is one of the most simple screening process. Because it’s easy to train the model with tons of images already made by opticians and optometrists. It does not have any value, it’s too simple.

My brother is an optician and has a huge database with retina images. If even me with limited knowledge of ML and my brother as field expert could train a model to detect blood pressure problems.

Too simple, no value.

elbasti• 8 years ago

Well, not really. The tool used by the optician is a $5 dollar lantern connected to a brain that had to go through a $300,000 dollar education.

matte_black2• 8 years ago

What do you do after you discover you are at risk? Get your affairs in order?

ceejayoz6• 8 years ago

Adjust diet, exercise, statins, get a cardiology consult?

matte_black2• 8 years ago

But if you’re already at the point where you are at risk and your eyes show it, isn’t it already too late to really do anything about it?

logronoide8• 8 years ago

Visit your family doctor ASAP.

tinymollusk• 8 years ago

It gives a high-risk group the ability to notify their friends and family and practice what to do in event of a heart attack. My mom frequently stays with me, but outside of "call 911" I don't really know what to do in teh event of a heart attack. Time lost is lives lost, so better preparation could quite literally save lives.

sjg0072• 8 years ago

You could carry a defibrillator with you.

amelius• 8 years ago

I suspect that it's mostly the amount of data that allows this, and that the software is just using run-off-the-mill statistics/ML. The title should reflect that. It's not the software, it's the data.

davidw• 8 years ago

Pretty cool to see those photos. I used to work at a company that makes fundus cameras that take those kinds of pictures.

bromuro• 8 years ago

opening a new opportunity for artificial intelligence in the vast and lucrative global health industry.

well done! google will join the lucrative industry of the people’s health. the rich will survive, the other will build the machine to make them survive.

leeoniya• 8 years ago

i think it'll be quite some time until ML and CV can do the breadth of diagnostics for all possible things.

my wife is an optometrist. just from looking at retinas, she finds brain tumors among other scary systemic problems. even if you have perfect vision, go in for an exam, it can literally save your life.

sjg0072• 8 years ago

Anybody have the link or how can I test myself?

hemapani• 8 years ago

Remember what happened they tried to predict the flu. https://www.wired.com/2015/10/can-learn-epic-failure-google-...

In https://www.kaggle.com/c/diabetic-retinopathy-detection actually ML algo did better than humans. Yet it will take time for apply these widely.

candiodari2• 8 years ago

Those are two entirely unrelated methods. One worked, one failed. One is a sort of "wisdom of the crowd" algorithm (as in human crowds) and it failed after initially showing promise (essentially it worked until someone told the crowd), one is machine learning from images.

okigan• 8 years ago

Google’s algorithms were able to predict whether someone had high blood pressure or was at risk of a heart attack or stroke

How is that different from just measuring the blood pressure (with really inexpensive device)?

mping• 8 years ago

Honest question: why is that an alternative medicine eg. Iridology is seen as quackery but a computer predicting heart attack risk is not? I know the science behind AI but from a patient point of view, they both analyze the eye.

In our eyes, Google’s software sees heart attack risk

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