About the research topic
The ambition of the MERLIN project is to improve in-depth diagnosis and therapeutic follow-up of diseases that impact the eye’s retina. To do so, the MERLIN partners will deliver a novel medical imaging device able to detect pathological alterations in the retina with highly enhanced sensitivity and specificity. The medical applications of this device encompass a wide range of retinal pathologies, including age-related macular degeneration (AMD), as well as chronic vascular conditions, including diabetes. Using current imaging techniques, it is difficult to detect them at early stage, and it often takes months to assess the effects of treatments. These limitations hinders both the clinical management of patients and the investigation of new therapies.In order to overcome these issues, the device developed in MERLIN will for the first time enable doctors to examine the retina with multiple imaging modalities at both the macroscopic and microscopic scales.
Within MERLIN, the Erasmus MC team is the lead of Work Package 5, dedicated to image processing tasks included fast motion correction in OCT, co-localization of multi-modal and multi-scale retinal data, and automatic segmentation and analysis of retinal biomarkers. The project was successfully completed and resulting in a prototype device to be further validated in clinical centers and become ready for further commercial production.
Funding: European Comission, Horizon 2020 - Grant agreement 780989
