NHLBI roadmap highlights research gaps in retinal biomarkers and cardiovascular risk

Non-invasive and relatively low-cost ophthalmic imaging techniques, particularly those focusing on retinal biomarkers, offer significant potential to improve the detection, diagnosis, and monitoring of systemic diseases, especially cardiovascular conditions, according to a recent National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute’s (NHLBI) workshop.

Based on the discussions at the workshop, the NHLBI has released a Roadmap detailing current knowledge gaps and new research opportunities to evaluate the relationships between the eye, specifically retinal biomarkers, and the risk of cardiovascular diseases such as coronary artery disease, heart failure, stroke, hypertension, and vascular dementia.

The Roadmap outlines several key gaps, such as the need to simplify and standardize the process of capturing high-quality retinal images by non-specialist health workers. It also stresses the importance of conducting longitudinal studies with diverse at-risk populations using multidisciplinary networks, and improving privacy protections for participants and data.

Additional gaps include the need to better measure structural and functional retinal biomarkers, understand the link between microvascular and macrovascular risk factors, and enhance multimodal imaging techniques. The integration of advanced imaging with ‘omics’ data, lifestyle information, primary care records, and radiological reports, using artificial intelligence, is also highlighted as essential for improving the identification of individual-level risk.

Reference
Chew EY, Burns SA, Abraham AG, et al. Standardization and clinical applications of retinal imaging biomarkers for cardiovascular disease: a Roadmap from an NHLBI workshop. Nat Rev Cardiol. 2024;doi: 10.1038/s41569-024-01060-8. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 39039178.