New research highlights how data is processed to detect glaucomatous optic neuropathy

Over this past summer, I was fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to deliver a speech to the State University of New York (SUNY) College of Optometry residency class of 2019. During this 20 minutes (which they likely perceived as just over an hour), I recommended that residents take a few moments and conduct a search of the world's literature using the key words "deep learning" with the disease of their choice. Conducting such a search myself gave me a better understanding of the likely direction of health care in my clinical lifetime. A study recently published in JAMA Ophthalmology describes a deep learning system which appears to show high sensitivity and specificity for the detection of glaucoma.1 Previously by Dr. Casella: Consider IOP fluctuations when diagnosing glaucoma Deep learning So, just what exactly is deep learning? In the arena of artificial intelligence, this subset of machine learning is based on so-called "neural networks" that process data into concepts.