A new scientific paper developed within the AI-AGE research project, implemented by the University of Donja Gorica (UDG) and the University of Montenegro, has been published in the international journal Current Medical Imaging. The study, titled “Deep Learning Discrimination of Colorectal Cancer using Retinal Fundus Photographs: UK Biobank Case-Control Study,” explores the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to identify retinal imaging patterns associated with colorectal cancer.
Using 1,600 retinal fundus images from the UK Biobank dataset, the researchers developed a deep learning model based on EfficientNet-B3, achieving an AUROC of 0.945 on an independent participant-level test set. The findings suggest that retinal images may contain valuable information about systemic diseases beyond the eye, opening possibilities for future non-invasive screening and risk assessment approaches. However, further clinical validation is required before such methods can be considered for practical healthcare applications.
The research represents an important achievement for the AI-AGE project and demonstrates the growing potential of advanced AI methods in biomedical research in Montenegro. The project benefits from synergies with HPC Montenegro (NCC Montenegro) and the EuroCC initiatives, which support the development of national competencies in High-Performance Computing (HPC), data analytics, and artificial intelligence. This collaboration contributes to strengthening the research infrastructure and expertise needed for computationally demanding medical AI applications.
The AI-AGE project is implemented by the Faculty for Information Systems and Technologies at UDG and the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Montenegro, with funding from the Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation of Montenegro.
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