The volume and complexity of diagnostic imaging is increasing at a pace faster than the availability of human expertise to interpret it. Artificial intelligence has shown great promise in classifying two-dimensional photographs of some common diseases and typically relies on databases of millions of annotated images. Until now, the challenge of reaching the performance of expert clinicians in a real-world clinical pathway with three-dimensional diagnostic scans has remained unsolved. Here, we apply a novel deep learning architecture to a clinically heterogeneous set of three-dimensional optical coherence tomography scans from patients referred to a major eye hospital. We demonstrate performance in making a referral recommendation that reaches or exceeds that of experts on a range of sight-threatening retinal diseases after training on only 14,884 scans. Moreover, we demonstrate that the tissue segmentations produced by our architecture act as a device-independent representation; referral accuracy is maintained when using tissue segmentations from a different type of device. Our work removes previous barriers to wider clinical use without prohibitive training data requirements across multiple pathologies in a real-world setting.

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eudract.ema.europa.eu Identifier: 2007-000847-89

Idiopathic juxtafoveal retinal telangiectasis type 2 (macular telangiectasia type 2; MacTel) is a rare neurovascular degenerative retinal disease. To identify genetic susceptibility loci for MacTel, we performed a genomewide association study (GWAS) with 476 cases and 1733 controls of European ancestry. Genome-wide significant associations (P < 5 × 10 -8 ) were identified at 3 independent loci (rs73171800 at 5q14.3, P = 7.74 × 10 -17 ; rs715 at 2q34, P = 9.97 × 10 -14 ; rs477992 at 1p12, P = 2.60 × 10 -12 ) and then replicated (P < 0.01) in an independent cohort of 172 cases and 1134 controls. The 5q14.3 locus is known to associate with variation in retinal vascular diameter, and the 2q34 and 1p12 loci have been implicated in the glycine/serine metabolic pathway. We subsequently found significant differences of blood serum levels of glycine (P = 4.04 × 10 -6 ) and serine (P = 2.48 × 10 -4 ) between MacTel cases and controls.MacTel cases typically present at 40-60 years with abnormal right-angled juxtafoveolar capillaries and parafoveal telangiectasias. It is an uncommon disease with a 0.0045-0.1% population prevalence and no obvious sex bias [1][2][3] . Retinal lesions typically co-present with MacTel, including retinal transparency, outer retinal and choroidal neovascularization, lamellar holes or foveal cysts, photoreceptor dysfunction, minimal exudation, yellow-white parafoveal crystals, and retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) pigmentation abnormalities and atrophy. Central vision impairment and decreased visual acuity are the usual clinical outcomes. MacTel is a bilateral disease, but asymmetry of the eyes for disease severity and presence of lesions is possible. The lesions also occur in 0.06-1.18% of the general population 2 .Risk factors for MacTel are largely unknown, however associations have been observed with smoking 2,4 , diabetes 5,6 , high BMI 6 , hypertension 6 and obesity 6 .Observations of MacTel affected monozygotic twins 4,[7][8][9] , and multiplex families with vertical transmissions of MacTel 1,5,[9][10][11][12] , suggest a genetic etiology for the disease. The late-age of onset, low penetrance and variable phenotype as exemplified by asymptomatic affected relatives 9 , and positive and negative misdiagnoses, complicate the discovery of genetic variants predisposing to MacTel. We previously screened 27 candidate genes in 8 unrelated MacTel cases but found no causative mutations 13 . Linkage analysis of 17 families with MacTel individuals identified a 15.3Mb locus on chromosome 1q41-42.2 (LOD=3.45), however sequencing of the underlying genes revealed no causative mutations 14 . Results Discovery GWAS stageThe GWAS discovery stage included genotype data for 6,312,048 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) after quality control and imputation (including 1,093,805 SNPs genotyped on the Illumina Omni SNP chips) in 476 MacTel cases and 1,733 controls (see Table 1 and Online Methods). This sample size was large enough to achieve power of at least 0.90 for risk variants with allele frequencies of 0.10-...

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The chromatin remodeler CHD5 is expressed in neural tissue and is frequently deleted in aggressive neuroblastoma. Very little is known about the function of CHD5 in the nervous system or its mechanism of action. Here we report that depletion of Chd5 in the developing neocortex blocks neuronal differentiation and leads to an accumulation of undifferentiated progenitors. CHD5 binds a large cohort of genes and is required for facilitating the activation of neuronal genes. It also binds a cohort of Polycomb targets and is required for the maintenance of H3K27me3 on these genes. Interestingly, the chromodomains of CHD5 directly bind H3K27me3 and are required for neuronal differentiation. In the absence of CHD5, a subgroup of Polycomb-repressed genes becomes aberrantly expressed. These findings provide insights into the regulatory role of CHD5 during neurogenesis and suggest how inactivation of this candidate tumor suppressor might contribute to neuroblastoma.

Test-retest variability was lowest for MS and highest for PWS. However, MS does not provide spatial information. The authors recommend the use of CMS and PMS for monitoring macular function and consider a change of greater than 2.56 and 2.31 dB (the upper limit of the 95% confidence interval of their coefficients of repeatability), respectively, to exceed test-retest variability.

Peripapillary pachychoroid syndrome is a distinct PDS variant, in which peripapillary choroidal thickening is associated with nasal macular intraretinal and/or subretinal fluid and occasional disk edema. Recognition of PPS is important to distinguish it from disorders with overlapping features such as posterior uveitis and neuro-ophthalmologic conditions.