Research Projects

The COVID-19 caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus primarily affects lungs, but it causes Cardio Vascular complications too (Long B et. Al. (2020)). Cardio Vascular Disease (CVD) is a term that refers to a collection of disorders that affect the heart and blood vessels. Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) is one of the most common types of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and is a main cause for increasing the world's mortality rate.CAD is caused by the deposition of plaque (especially cholesterol) in the walls of coronary arteries that supply blood to the heart.CAD is termed in different names such as, Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) / Ischemic Heart Disease (IHD). Ischemic means that an organ not getting sufficient oxygen and blood. The diagnostic tests for CAD in a subject is through Electrocardiogram (ECG), Echocardiogram, Exercise stress test, etc. These tests diagnose the disease at the stage when the subject shows symptoms of CAD. Roughly, nine million deaths were caused by CAD globally. The global prevalence of CAD is rising year by year. To reduce its prevalence and mortality rate, early detection of the risk of CAD is necessary. One of the ways to recognize that a subject is at risk of CAD is his/her medical history (like Blood pressure, cholesterol, etc.). But this is not a practical way for all the time. So the challenge is to diagnose the risk of CAD in a subject as early as possible in an efficient way. The risk of CAD depends on the condition of blood vessels in human body. Recently a study showed that there is a relation between the choroid thickness and risk of CAD (Kocamaz et. al. (2021)).The choroid is the eye’s vascular layer that contains connective tissues and is situated between the retina and the sclera. It provides nutrition and controls the eye's temperature and volumeThe studies in (Kocamaz et. al. (2021)) showed that the subfovealchoroidal thickness in the CAD group was thinner than in the control group. Choroidal thickness was statistically thinner in the CAD group in all the measured regions (nasal 500, nasal 1000, nasal 1500, temporal 500, temporal 1000, and temporal 1500 micron as shown in Figure 1). This study suggests that choroidal thickness can be employed as a disease marker for coronary artery disease. Moreover, choroid thinning detection in a subject with diabetes, hypertension or hypercholesterolemia diseases shows the risk of CAD. So, choroid thickness variation may be a biomarker of CAD in subjects. This proposal suggests a method for the automated detection of the risk of CAD by extracting the Nasal, Temporal, central macula, retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) thickness from the retinal OCT of different subjects. For the automated prediction from the OCT images, it is necessary to develop suitable machine learning and deep learning methods that can study the features in the OCT images accurately for CAD risk prediction.