Computer Vision News - April 2023

43 Ylenia Giarratano years later. We wonder, does it feel like home now, and how is she coping with the British weather? “ Scotland is lovely, and with all this climate change, the weather is getting better!” she laughs. “I like living here in Edinburgh, but I don’t know what the future holds just yet. ” Of all her work, she tells us she is most proud of her paper describing the pipeline for analyzing OCTA images , which was published at MICCAI in the OMIA workshop , and hopes to submit an extended version soon describing each feature in more detail. “ I think retinal imaging can be a little overlooked in the computer vision world, ” Ylenia ponders thoughtfully. “ There is so much potential we’re not exploiting. We’re acquiring OCTA images with these tiny vessels and can do so much with them. With all this new technology, we’ve got a huge opportunity with retinal imaging! ” been studying diabetes and diabetic retinopathy, chronic kidney disease, and the potential of using retinal biomarkers to assess the suitability of individuals for kidney donation . Recently, Ylenia has been working on a project concerning small vessel disease in the brain. “ The eye is actually part of the central nervous system, ” she explains. “ It’s an outgrowth of the developing brain, and they’re physically linked. Changes in the vasculature of the eye may mirror changes in the microvasculature of the brain, so we can exploit retinal imaging to get information on what’s happening at the vascular level in the brain. ” The group is also launching a longitudinal pilot study that is acquiring retinal images of pregnant individuals at higher risk of stillbirth to demonstrate the potential utility of retinal biomarkers for the early detection of pregnancy complications. Having moved to Scotland for a six-month internship with an Erasmus+ scholarship after her master’s, Ylenia is still there six