Oculomics: Insights into Systemic Disease through Ophthalmic Biomarkers

Unlike anywhere else in the human body, the eye offers a unique opportunity for direct, in vivo observation of the neurosensory and microvascular systems. Indeed many systemic diseases exhibit ophthalmic changes, including hypertension, diabetes, coronary disease, systemic inflammatory disease, renal disease and stroke, sometimes as the earliest detectable signs of disease. The ability to discover such associations has largely been accelerated by the emergence of high resolution, non-invasive ophthalmic imaging, coupled with a growing ability to link large-scale health data across disparate organ sytems.

'Oculomics' - the association of ophthalmic biomarkers with systemic health and disease - offer a unique opportunity to further our understanding of eye-body relationships and support the development of novel diagnostic and prognostic tools through non-invasive means.

The goal of this Research Topic is to highlight new developments and discoveries in the study of Oculomics across a range of systemic diseases, sharing insights into previously poorly understood or unknown associations between the eye and body.

Research within the scope of linking ophthalmic biosignals to systemic health and disease are invited.

Specific themes we would like contributors to consider include:

-The repurposing of non-invasive ophthalmic diagnostic tests to diagnose or predict systemic disease
-Description of novel data linkage, including multimodal data across eye and systemic health
-Leveraging advanced computational methods and large-scale datasets to gain new insights into eye-body health relationships such as brain, heart, kidneys.
-Machine learning approaches which allow novel insights into the mechanisms and/or features involving the eye-body health associations.


Eligible article types include Original Articles, Reviews, Study Protocols, Methods and Data reports.