Post by Ahmad Abdelaal

I recently won an award for Best Oral Presentation at the Cambridge ICRC conference for my work on RPE65-associated inherited retinal disease. The research addresses the computational difficulty of detecting tiny peripheral biomarkers within 16-million-pixel ultra-widefield retinal scans - a classic needle-in-a-haystack problem. By implementing localised patch-based deep learning, we demonstrated that AI can provide the objective, high-resolution monitoring required for precise clinical decision-making. Automating these workflows offers a scalable solution for clinicians to establish clearer eligibility criteria for patients seeking life-changing gene therapies. Thank you to my supervisors Nikolas Pontikos, Birgit Lorenz and Vincent Chan at Eye2Gene, and the ICRC organisers for an excellent conference.