Researchers have developed a new artificial intelligence (AI) model that can predict the risk of long-term visual impairment in patients with high myopia, one of the top three causes of irreversible blindness in many regions of the world. The study is published in the journal JAMA Ophthalmology.

 The team at the Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) said its machine-learning model works well for predicting—and visualising—the risk of visual impairment over the long term.

 Machine learning is a type of AI focused on building computer systems that learn from data, enabling software to improve its performance over time. People with extreme shortsightedness (called high myopia) can clearly see objects that are near to them but cannot focus on objects at a distance.

 Contacts, glasses, or surgery can be used to correct their vision, but having high myopia can lead to a condition called pathologic myopia, leading causes of blindness.

 “We know that machine-learning algorithms work well on tasks such as identifying changes and complications in myopia but in this study, we wanted to investigate something different, namely how good these algorithms are at long-term predictions,” said Yining Wang, lead author of the study.

 The study, recently published in the journal JAMA Ophthalmology, looked at the visual acuity of 967 Japanese patients at TDMU’s Advanced Clinical Center for Myopia after 3 and 5 years had passed.

 The researchers formed a dataset from 34 variables that are commonly collected during ophthalmic examinations, such as age, current visual acuity, and the diameter of the cornea.