Call for glaucoma tool developed in Cambridge to be used across the UK

A free online tool that can accurately classify the severity of glaucoma could help thousands of patients with severe sight loss access the support they are entitled to, say experts in Cambridge.

The Glaucoma Field Defect Classifier (GFDC), developed at the Cambridge Eye Research Centre at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, uses a computer vision algorithm to assess the seriousness of visual field defects without the need for a consultant ophthalmologist. Researchers behind the tool say it could transform the way patients are assessed and ensure those with severe disease are not left out of official blindness registration.

“Through technological innovation, good leadership, and hard work from the student body, this piece of work has allowed us to better understand the scale of the problem that needs to be tackled,” said Dr Nikhil Jain, one of the researchers behind the project.

Their latest findings, published in the British Journal of Ophthalmology, warn that up to 40 per cent of patients with glaucoma may be missing out on a ‘certificate of visual impairment’—a document needed to access many forms of social care and medical support.

One reason patients are missed, the paper explains, is that existing guidance is unclear. Assessing whether a patient has mild, moderate or severe disease is often time-consuming and relies on subjective judgement from busy clinicians.

“This work started in 2021—it took time to conceptualise how to approach the problem, develop the web application, recruit collaborators, and collect data for analysis,” said Dr Arun Thirunavukarasu, who led the project and is about to start ophthalmology training in North London. “It has been a marathon.”

Initially, Dr Thirunavukarasu and a group of 30 students manually screened glaucoma patients to identify those who were blind, but the process proved too slow to be practical in real-world clinics. The GFDC was created to speed up that process and was later used to assess patient registrations, revealing that many qualifying patients had not been officially certified.

Professor Rupert Bourne, director of the research centre and consultant ophthalmic surgeon, said: “The team developed a semi-automated algorithm to identify glaucoma patients missing out on social care due to inaccurate, inefficient, and unreliable referral pathways that currently rely on ophthalmologists to recognise and implement certification of blindness.”

He added: “This was a large project that benefited from collaboration with students at University of Cambridge, to whom we extend our grateful thanks.”

The researchers hope their tool, which is freely available online, will now be adopted by glaucoma clinics across the country and potentially used in research for other eye conditions.