Eye ACT
Seeing the Future of Brain Health Through the Eyes
About
The Eye ACT study, led by Dr. Cecilia Lee at the University of Washington, aims to provide insights on how opthalmic conditions such as glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy can provide early indicators to Alzheimer's disease. As part of this project, the FAIR Data Innovations Hub is leading the development of the Envision Portal.
What is the Eye ACT study?
- The Eye ACT study investigates the relationship between eye health and cognitive decline. It aims to identify biomarkers in the eye that can predict the onset of Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative conditions.
What is the Envision Portal?
- The Envision Portal is an open-source platform designed to streamline the management and sharing of eye imaging data. Specifically, it will be designed to help researchers manage, curate and share their data following the FAIR principles, such that the data is ready for AI-driven analysis and collaborative studies.
What challenges does it address?
- There is currently no platform that helps making eye imaging data FAIR. The Envision Portal enables that through intuitive user interfaces and automation such that making eye imaging data FAIR requires minimal time and effort from researchers.
Why is this important?
- Creating FAIR and AI-ready datasets is crucial for collaborating more effectively, leverage AI technologies and accelerate discoveries that could lead to better diagnostic tools and treatments for neurodegenerative diseases.
Development Approach
All software and tools developed by our team for the Eye ACT project, including the Envision Portal, are developed using an open-source approach. This allows for transparency and collaboration with the open source community.
Funding
Our contribution to this project is funded through a subward from the National Institute of Aging (NIA) grant R01AG060942.
Research Partners
We are collaborating on this project with Dr. Cecilia Lee's team at the Computational Ophthalmology Lab (University of Washington).
Timeline
September 2024 - Development of the Envision Portal
The development of the Envision Portal begins as part of the Eye ACT study.
Impact
Publicly Available Imaging Datasets for Age-related Macular Degeneration: Evaluation according to the Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable (FAIR) Principles
Citation
Gim, N., Ferguson, A., Blazes, M., Soundarajan, S., Gasimova, A., Jiang, Y., Sanchez Gutiérrez, C., Zalunardo, L., Corradetti, G., Elze, T., Honda, N., Waheed, N., Cairns, A. M., C., Lee, A. Y., Sadda, S. R., Keenan, T. D. L., Patel, B., & Lee, C. S., on behalf of the Ryan Initiative For Macular Research (RIMR) Consortium. (2025). Experimental Eye Research, 110342. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exer.2025.110342
Eye ACT Home Page
Citation
Eye ACT Home Page (started 2025). https://github.com/EyeACT/eyeactstudy.org (Development status: Active)
Envision Portal
Citation
Envision Portal (started 2024). https://github.com/EyeACT/envision-portal (Development status: Active)