Supervisor View Full Details 2nd

• epidemiology/population health research
• Other

ophthalmology; imaging and image analysis of the eye

• Ophthalmology

• Dementia
• Vascular Medicine
• Other

imaging and image analysis

Our group's work spans from ophthalmic epidemiology, including diabetic eye screening through clinical work and clinical trials. We work predominantly on common blinding eye diseases from the point of diagnosis, treatment options, imaging and image analysis to qualitative research in education, training of wide variety of healthcare professionals. Our group consists of trained and certified ophthalmic image analysers, statisticians, clinicians, qualitative research specialists, and research students and post-docs at different stages of their career. We have ongoing collaboration with a large number of groups around the world in imaging, image analysis in wide variety of ophthalmic diseases. We also work with the Global Burden of Diseases group on the visual data.

Trends in prevalence of blindness and distance and near vision impairment over 30 years: an analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study.
GBD 2019 Blindness and Vision Impairment Collaborators; Vision Loss Expert Group of the Global Burden of Disease Study. Lancet Glob Health. 2021 PMID: 33275950
Self-reported visual difficulties in Europe and related factors: a European population-based cross-sectional survey, Nicolas Leveziel et al., Acta Ophthalmol. PMID: 33029925
Association of ambient air pollution with age-related macular degeneration and retinal thickness in UK Biobank. Chua SYL, et al and UK Biobank Eye and Vision Consortium. Br J Ophthalmol. PMID: 33495162

Diabetes mellitus has a prevalence of 7% in the UK and the numbers affected rise by 5% year on year. Diabetic retinopathy is a common complication of diabetes and is still one of the leading causes of blindness. Tragically, it affects many patients in the working age-group and therefore has a profound effect not only on personal lives but on the family's life with substantial societal cost. Nearly all people with diabetes are affected by diabetic retinopathy if they have diabetes for long enough duration. Some patients will have good control of the disease and still have eye-disease after a short duration, while others have poor control for a long time and have no or minimal disease.
There are several potential projects embedded in diabetes and diabetic eye-care, from screening to treatment. Understanding the speed of development of diabetic retinopathy and progression of the disease in a certain population, such as in Northern Ireland, is very much needed. Northern Ireland has a stable population and as such, its diabetic eye screening programme is a rich source of information for several studies. Qualitative studies in attendance, attitudes towards treatment options, understanding clinical effectiveness from the patients' and carers' point of view, looking at educational interventions are all possible.
In diabetic eye screening and diabetic eye disease treatment imaging is essential, therefore a large repository of data and images are available. Using conventional statistical methods and developing artificial intelligence both for the data-set and for image analysis will suit a wide range of research proposal. The stable population also lends itself for studies on genetics of diabetes and diabetic retinopathy.
Our worldwide collaboration provides good opportunities for policy research, collaboration with other research groups in all continents.
Those wishing to work on different diseases are also welcome as several data and image sets exist for analysis. In addition, our group has several image graders who can also contribute to primary and secondary image analysis.