Vision transformer-based stratification of pre/diabetic and pre/hypertensive patients from retinal photographs for 3PM applications

Vision transformer-based stratification of pre/diabetic and pre/hypertensive patients from retinal photographs for 3PM applications

EPMA Journal

10.1007/s13167-025-00412-9

https://doi.org/10.1007/s13167-025-00412-9

Krithi Pushpanathan, Yang Bai, Xiaofeng Lei, Jocelyn Hui Lin Goh, Can Can Xue, Samantha Min Er Yew, Miaoli Chee, Ten Cheer Quek, Qingsheng Peng, Zhi Da Soh, Marco Chak Yan Yu, Jun Zhou, Yaxing Wang, Jost B. Jonas, Xiaofei Wang, Xueling Sim, E. Shyong Tai, Charumathi Sabanayagam, Rick Siow Mong Goh, Yong Liu, Ching-Yu Cheng, Yih-Chung Tham

20 May 2025

Pushpanathan, K., Bai, Y., Lei, X., Goh, J. H. L., Xue, C. C., Yew, S. M. E., Chee, M., Quek, T. C., Peng, Q., Soh, Z. D., Yu, M. C. Y., Zhou, J., Wang, Y., Jonas, J. B., Wang, X., Sim, X., Tai, E. S., Sabanayagam, C., Goh, R. S. M., et al. (2025). Vision transformer-based stratification of pre/diabetic and pre/hypertensive patients from retinal photographs for 3PM applications. EPMA Journal, 16(2), 519–533. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13167-025-00412-9

Abstract Objective Diabetes and hypertension pose significant health risks, especially when poorly managed. Retinal evaluation though fundus photography can provide non-invasive assessment of these diseases, yet prior studies focused on disease presence, overlooking control statuses. This study evaluated vision transformer (ViT)-based models for assessing the presence and control statuses of diabetes and hypertension from retinal images. Methods ViT-based models with ResNet-50 for patch projection were trained on images from the UK Biobank (n = 113,713) and Singapore Epidemiology of Eye Diseases study (n = 17,783), and externally validated on the Singapore Prospective Study Programme (n = 7,793) and the Beijing Eye Study (n = 6064). Model performance was evaluated using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) for multiple tasks: detecting disease, identifying poorly controlled and well-controlled cases, distinguishing between poorly and well-controlled cases, and detecting pre-diabetes or pre-hypertension. Results The models demonstrated strong performance in detecting disease presence, with AUROC values of 0.820 for diabetes and 0.781 for hypertension in internal testing. External validation showed AUROCs ranging from 0.635 to 0.755 for diabetes, and 0.727 to 0.832 for hypertension. For identifying poorly controlled cases, the performance remained high with AUROCs of 0.871 (internal) and 0.655–0.851 (external) for diabetes, and 0.853 (internal) and 0.792–0.915 (external) for hypertension. Detection of well-controlled cases also yielded promising results for diabetes (0.802 [internal]; 0.675–0.838 [external]), and hypertension (0.740 [internal] and 0.675–0.807 [external]). In distinguishing between poorly and well-controlled disease, AUROCs were more modest with 0.630 (internal) and 0.512–0.547 (external) for diabetes, and 0.651 (internal) and 0.639–0.683 (external) for hypertension. For pre-disease detection, the models achieved AUROCs of 0.746 (internal) and 0.523–0.590 (external) for pre-diabetes, and 0.669 (internal) and 0.645–0.679 (external) for pre-hypertension. Conclusion ViT-based models show promise in classifying the presence and control statuses of diabetes and hypertension from retinal images. These findings support the potential of retinal imaging as a tool in primary care for opportunistic detection of diabetes and hypertension, risk stratification, and individualised treatment planning. Further validation in diverse clinical settings is warranted to confirm practical utility.

Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

This research / project is supported by the A*STAR - Industry Alignment Fund Pre-Positioning
Grant Reference no. : H20c6a0031

This research / project is supported by the National Medical Research Council - HPHSR Clinician Scientist Award
Grant Reference no. : NMRC/MOH/HCSAINV21nov-0001

https://oar.a-star.edu.sg/communities-collections/articles/23384

1878-5085

Institute of High Performance Computing 

https://doi.org/10.1007/s13167-025-00412-9