Retinal eye-tracking for the prognosis and monitoring of multiple sclerosis

Abstract
The goal of this project is to validate an innovativehighly sensitive retinal eye tracking
technologythe tracking scanning laser ophthalmoscopeTSLOas a prognostic and monitoring
tool for neurodegenerative disordersnamely multiple sclerosisMSThe applications of effective
treatments for multiple sclerosis are constrained bythe absence of methods for early detection
andquantitativehighly sensitive methods monitoring deficits early in disease course when
treatment may have a better chance of successAs already demonstratedthe TSLO is capable
of rapidly assessing and measuring the extraordinarily finemicroscopic motion of the human eye
during fixation in MS patientsFixational eye movements are neurally encodedinvoluntary
movements that require the coordination of many areas of the central nervous systemGiven the
TSLO s theoretical sensitivity to changearcminutesand its precision of measurementfixational eye movements have the potential utility for tracking neurodegenerative disease
progression at an unprecedented scaleWith the advent of the new FDA approved MS treatment
targeting B cellsocrelizumabclinical tools are now desperately needed to not only assess
treatment efficacybut to objectively assess patient disability at the earliest stage of disease in
order to cut relapse rates and prevent irrevocable disabilityIn this projectwe will determine the
optimal fixational eye motion metrics to distinguish patients from controlsestablish the
relationship between clinical disease severity measures and fixational eye movement deficits as
defined by the TSLO systemand to use machine learning algorithms to further strengthen our
fixational metrics Narrative
The goal of our project is to clinically validate a retinal imaging and eye tracking technologythe
tracking scanning laser ophthalmoscopeTSLOas a prognostic and monitoring tool for
neurodegenerative disordersparticularly Multiple SclerosisMSThe TSLO system is capable
of rapidly assessing and measuring the extraordinarily finemicroscopic motion of the human eye
during fixation with an accuracy ofarcminutesGiven the numerous brain regions involved
with eye motion and the TSLO s precision of measurementfixational eye movements now have
the potential utility for tracking neurodegenerative disease progression for the MS patient
population