Artificial intelligence for improving sickle cell retinopathy diagnosis and management

Sickle cell retinopathy is often initially asymptomatic even in proliferative stages, but can progress to cause vision loss due to vitreous haemorrhages or tractional retinal detachments. Challenges with access and adherence to screening dilated fundus examinations, particularly in medically underserved areas where the burden of sickle cell disease is highest, highlight the need for novel approaches to screening for patients with vision-threatening sickle cell retinopathy. This article reviews the existing literature on and suggests future research directions for coupling artificial intelligence with multimodal retinal imaging to expand access to automated, accurate, imaging-based screening for sickle cell retinopathy. Given the variability in retinal specialist practice patterns with regards to monitoring and treatment of sickle cell retinopathy, we also discuss recent progress toward development of machine learning models that can quantitatively track disease progression over time. These artificial intelligence-based applications have great potential for informing evidence-based and resource-efficient clinical diagnosis and management of sickle cell retinopathy.