Reduced blood capillaries in the back of the eye may be a new, noninvasive way to diagnose early cognitive impairment, the precursor to Alzheimer’s disease in which individuals become forgetful, reports a newly published Northwestern Medicine study.
Scientists detected these vascular changes in the human eye non-invasively, with an infrared camera and without the need for dyes or expensive MRI scanners. The back of the eye is optically accessible to a new type of technology (OCT angiography) that can quantify capillary changes in great detail and with unparalleled resolution, making the eye an ideal mirror for what is going on in the brain.
Source: news.northwestern.edu