NWO grant for diabetes check

Bart ter Haar Romenij receives a grant of NWO for an international project to screen for diabetes. The grant of a maximum of €395.000,- is meant for the project named ‘RetinaCheck: One-Stop-Shop for Sight-Threatening Eye Disorders’. The grant will be complemented with a contribution of i-Optics B.V. and by money from the Chinese counterpart of the project.

Worldwide diabetes is a huge problem, especially in Asia. It is estimated that over 9% of the Chinese population suffered from diabetes in 2011, more than any other country. It is important to find the disease in an early stage, so you can still treat it well. Otherwise the disease can lead to blindness for example.

The He Shi Eye Care is one of the largest eye care providers in the province of Liaoning, Northern China. They started the initiative to screen over 24 million people in the province for diabetes. They do this by looking at the blood vessels in the retina. If these are leaking, this is one of the first signs of the presence of diabetes. Besides diabetes the software is also able to look for signs of glaucoma and retina degeneration.

The Eindhoven University of Technology and the Northeastern University (NEU, Shenyang, China) contribute to this project by delivering computer aided diagnostics software that can analyze the images automatically. i-Optics B.V. develops cheap innovative camera’s to be able to scan the retinas.