Category: Research

On April 8th, 2025, Dr. Hugo Le Boité successfully defended his PhD thesis titled “Deep Learning tools for evaluation of diabetic retinopathy and maculopathy”. This marked the culmination of a three and a half-year journey during which Dr. Le Boité developed and applied tools for the segmentation of retinal non-perfusion in OCT-Angiography images in diabetic retinopathy, tools for the segmentation of pathological fluids in OCT images, as well as innovative methodological approaches to alleviate the manual annotation burden when constructing large database of medical images in the purpose of training efficient deep learning models.

The defense was held in the presence of a jury comprising the following members:

• Mr. Raphael Sznitman: professor and research director at the ARTORG center for biomedical engineering and research, Bern Switzerland.
• Ms. Alexandre Miere: assistant professor of ophthalmology in the ophthalmology department of the Creteil Hospital (Centre Hospitalier Intercommunal de Créteil, France)
• Mr. Fabrice Meriaudeau: professor, and research director at the Medical Imaging group, Université de Bourgogne. President.
• Mr. Xavier Guillonneau: research director at the Institut de la Vision, Sorbonne Université, Paris, France.
• Ms. Catherine Creuzot Garcher: professor, ophthalmology department of the Dijon University Hospital, France.
• Mr. Gwenolé Quellec: research director, INSERM, LaTIM, UMR-1101.
• Ms. Aude Couturier: professor, ophthalmology department of the Lariboisière hospital, Paris, France.

This research provides potential deep learning tools that could be applied in clinical practice for automatic segmentation of specific biomarkers, but also provides interesting methodological techniques that will be applied in future projects in order to optimize manual annotation in the production of medical image segmentations.

Appearing in the top picture, from left to right: Fabrice Meriaudeau, Hugo Le Boité, Xavier Guillonneau, Gwenolé Quellec, Aude Couturier, Alexandra Miere. Catherine Creuzot Garcher and Raphael Sznitman participated remotely.

On December 12, 2024, Dr. Rachid Zeghlache successfully defended his PhD thesis titled “Longitudinal and Multi-Modal Monitoring for Diabetic Retinopathy Detection Using Deep Learning”. This marked the culmination of a three-year journey during which Dr. Zeghlache explored various innovative approaches to tackle a central challenge of the Evired project: predicting the future progression of diabetic retinopathy in patients based on imaging and contextual data.

The defense was held in the presence of a jury comprising the following members:

• Mr. François ROUSSEAU: Professor, IMT Atlantique, president
• Ms. Alice OTHMANI: Associate Professor (HDR), LISSI, Université Paris-Est Créteil (UPEC), reviewer
• Ms. Marie BEURTON-AIMAR: Associate Professor (HDR), LaBRI, Université Bordeaux, reviewer
• Mr. Gwenolé Quellec: Research Director, INSERM, LaTIM, UMR-1101
• Mr. Mathieu LAMARD: Research Engineer (HDR), LaTIM, UMR-1101, director
• Mr. Pierre-Henri CONZE: Associate Professor (HDR), IMT Atlantique
• Mr. Mostafa EL HABIB DAHO: Researcher (CPJ), UBO – HDR, LaTIM, UMR-1101

This groundbreaking research lays the foundation for personalized, AI-driven management of diabetic retinopathy and is expected to inspire significant innovations during the final stages of the Evired project.

NB: on the picture from the left to the right: François Rousseau, Pierre-Henri Conze, Gwenolé Quellec, Dr. Rachid Zeghlache, Mathieu Lamard, Alice Othmani, Mostafa El Habib Daho (Marie Beurton-Aimar participated remotely).

EURETINA congress took place in Barcelona this year, september 18th-22nd

During the congress

– Pr Aude Couturier, Head of Ophthalmology department at Lariboisière Hospital, presented our EviRed project during symposium dedicated to “Diabetic retinopathy: automated detection and prediction of progression” on Friday

– Mathias Gallardo, data scientist, opened the Euretina session “Artificial Intelligence for Practice” by reviewing “opportunities and challenges of Retinal Imaging and AI” on Sunday

– Dr Carla Danese from Lariboisière Team presented her work on images during two sessions “One-year change of non-perfusion index in non proliferative diabetic retinopathy” and “Macular metrics in eyes with diabetic retinopathy versus without predominantly peripheral lesions”

– An eposter “Spatially resolved imaging of human macular capillaries using adaptive optics-enhanced optical coherence tomography angiography” reflected also the minutious PhD work of Dr Sophie Bonnin, from Rothschild Foundation Hospital on images

EURETINA congress was a very good opportunity to network and meet with friends.

Thanks to EURETINA board for their organisation and for the hommage to Pr Ramin Tadayoni who is our daily EviRed source of inspiration!

See you next year at EURETINA congress in Paris!

As in previous years, the entire ophthalmology research community gathered at the ARVO 2024 conference, held in Seattle, USA, from May 4 to May 8, 2024 (https://www.arvo.org/annual-meeting/). Several participants from the Evired project were present: the Zeiss team, as well as Mostafa El Habib Daho and Mathieu Lamard from LaTIM. The team was able to meet to review the project and take advantage of the numerous scientific presentations.

Mostafa El Habib Daho presented his work on the classification of diabetic retinopathy using an artificial intelligence system that combines wide-field retinal photography from the CLARUS® 500 (Carl Zeiss Meditec Inc., Dublin, CA, USA) and the 200DTx (OPTOS, Dunfermline, UK. His presentation attracted considerable interest from attendees, highlighting the innovative and significant potential of the Evired project.

Carla Danese, from APHP Lariboisiére Ophthalmology Department, presented also her work which assess the one year change of retinal non perfusion in non proliferative diabetic retinopathy on optical coherence tomography angiography (OCT-A)15x15mmimages

NB, On the pictures,

• Zeiss and LaTIM teams:
  • First rank from left to right: Ali Salehi (ZEISS), Hugang Ren (ZEISS), Deborah Cosette (ZEISS)
  • Second rank from left to right: Stephanie Magazzeni (ZEISS), Rebecca Berghorn (ZEISS), Mostafa El Habib Daho (LaTIM), Mathieu Lamard (LaTIM), Ian Raden (ZEISS), Sejal Ghate (ZEISS), Bryan Rogoff (ZEISS)
• Mostafa El Habib Daho presenting his work
• Carla Danese presenting her poster
• Deborah Cosette (Zeiss)/Mostafa El Habib Daho (LaTIM)/Carla Danese (APHP- Lariboisiére Ophthalmology Department

On the 26 April 2024, Dr Sophie Bonnin, defended her PhD thesis brilliantly entitled “Topology and morphometry of healthy and pathological human retinal capillaries “.

This presentation was very emotional and dedicated to Pr. Ramin Tadayoni who passed away few days before, and who have always supported and encouraged us to achieve high goals.

This was the achievement of a long journey of more than 3 years of hard work, under the direction of Professor Aude Couturier (Lariboisière Hospital) and Professor Michel Paques (Hospital of XV-XX)

The defense took place in the presence of a jury composed of the following members:

• Bahram Bodaghi, Professor of Ophthalmology, Pitié Salpêtrière Hospital, Sorbonne Université, President of the jury
• Marcela Szopos, Professor in Applied Mathematics, CNRS, MAP5, Université Paris Cité,
• Marie-Noëlle Delyfer, Professor of Ophthalmology, , Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Bordeaux ,Université de Bordeaux
• P Alain Gaudric, Professor of Ophthalmology, APHP, Hôpital Lariboisière and Université de Paris
• José-Maria Fullana, Professor in Biomechanics of fluid, department of Mechanical Engineering, Institut Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, UMR 7190, Sorbonne Université, CNRS Paris
• Xavier Guillonneau, Research Associate, Sorbonne University, INSERM, CNRS, Institut de la Vision, Paris.

The aim of this thesis was to deepen the analysis and understanding of the physiological and pathological retinal microcirculation, with a special focus on diabetes, using innovative modern clinical imaging technologies.

The first part was dedicated to the characterization of the retinal microcirculation in healthy subjects by combining several high-resolution imaging technologies, in particular optical coherence tomography angiography and ophthalmoscopy, both corrected by adaptive optics, showing the 3D organization of the capillary layers.

The second part studied the early microvascular manifestations of diseases affecting the microcirculation by evaluating patients with diabetes and patients suffering from Takayasu’s disease.

This work paves the way for a new analysis of neurovascular relationships in the human retina, which may provide a new basis for modelling blood flow in neural tissue.

This work was performed in XV-XX hospital (CIC 1423) with the excellent Paris Eye Imaging team.

This thesis has been possible with the support of RHU EviRed, Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, Région Ile-de-France and IHU ForeSight, and the teams of XV-XX, Lariboisière Hospital Rothschild Foundation Hospital and Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital.

For the RHU Evired, Dr. Sophie Bonnin has been involved in the project since its inception and contributes significantly to the daily work, particularly in the establishment and follow-up of the Reading Centre.

Her main interest area work are dedicated to imaging, retina and neuro-ophthalmology area.

NB: on the picture from the left to the right: Pr.  Marcela Szopos, Pr. José-Maria Fullana,  Pr. Bahram Bodaghi, Pr. Aude Couturier, Dr. Sophie Bonnin, Pr. Michel Paques, Dr. Xavier Guillonneau, Pr. Marie-Noëlle Delyfer .Via web connection Pr Alain Gaudric

On the 21st of December 2023, EviRed’s recruitment ended with an outstanding inclusion of 3182 patients!

As a reminder, 14 French sites participate in this clinical study. Patients are followed every year. Their medical data related to diabetes and eye conditions are collected. Patient’s eyes are imaged with several   modalities and different machines for each modality.

We would like to thank all the teams on the 14 sites for their amazing work and all the patients who agreed to participate in this cohort.