mHealth Conjunctiva Photography for Early Preeclampsia Risk-Stratification

Young Kim of Purdue University in the U.S. will develop a diagnostic platform for prediction and detection of preeclampsia early in pregnancy. The project is based on non-invasive imaging with an unmodified smartphone of the conjunctiva of the eye, and it will be a collaboration with Edwin Were of the Moi University Teaching and Referral Hospital (MTRH) in Kenya and Martin Were of Vanderbilt University Medical Center in the U.S. A cohort of 1,600 pregnant women at 12-15 weeks of gestation will be recruited from MTRH antenatal clinics, and they will be followed through pregnancy and delivery to determine clinical outcomes. Participants will get a conjunctival photo taken at enrollment, using a custom-made color chart to standardize images, and an AI-based model will be developed to predict preeclampsia risk from the vasculature features in the imaging data.