{"id":945535,"date":"2026-10-29T20:12:19","date_gmt":"2026-10-29T20:12:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/945535\/"},"modified":"2026-10-29T20:12:19","modified_gmt":"2026-10-29T20:12:19","slug":"a-routine-eye-exam-could-soon-predict-your-risk-of-a-heart-attack-heres-how","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/945535\/","title":{"rendered":"A routine eye exam could soon predict your risk of a heart attack. Here\u2019s how"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Sarah<\/p>\n

October 30, 2026 \u2014 5:00am<\/p>\n

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Our eyes are the windows to our soul. They may also be the windows to our heart.<\/p>\n

Researchers believe routine eye exams may soon be able to detect and predict systemic disease, including the risk of a heart attack and the presence of atrial fibrillation (an irregular, fast heartbeat).<\/p>\n

This exam would provide a non-invasive alternative to other tests, make screening easier for those in rural areas and allow people to take action before they experience harm.<\/p>\n

\"OphthalmologistOphthalmologist Dr Tanya Trinh can find out a lot about a person\u2019s heart health from their eyes.Sam Mooy<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a cardiologist, I see too many people whose first sign of heart disease is a heart attack,\u201d says Dr Girish Dwivedi, a professor of cardiology at The University of Western Australia (UWA).<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to catch heart disease early, while there is still time to act. The eye gives us that chance. It is the only place in the body where you can look straight at living blood vessels, without a needle, an X-ray or surgery.\u201d<\/p>\n

What our eyes reveal<\/p>\n

Our eyes are not only revealing, says cardiologist Professor Hosen Kiat, they are an often overlooked organ in medicine.<\/p>\n

There are associations between cataracts<\/a>, glaucoma<\/a> and an increased risk of heart disease; a blue or grey ring<\/a> around the cornea can indicate high cholesterol; and rarely, high cholesterol can also cause yellow bumps, called xanthelasma, around the eyelids.<\/p>\n

What is most revealing, however, is the blood vessels behind our eyes.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"Dr<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe tiny vessels at the back of the eye and the vessels of the heart grow from the same tissue early in life,\u201d Dwivedi explains. \u201cThey are also affected by the same things, such as atherosclerosis, diabetes and hypertension. When the vessels in your eye are under strain, it is often a clue that your heart is too.\u201d<\/p>\n

By giving a patient eye drops to dilate the pupil, ophthalmologist Dr Tanya Trinh can take a photo and then analyse it for narrowing, leaking blood or cholesterol and haemorrhages.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes what we can see is little cholesterol plaques that have actually blocked off a blood vessel, and you can have a little stroke in the eye,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

And because these are the only blood vessels that can be viewed directly, health issues can be detected earlier, says Kiat: \u201cThere are no blood vessels that we see so clearly like the retinal arteries in an eye exam, even with coronary angiography, for example, we just see the dye, we just see the contrast.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"EyesEyes are a valuable and overlooked source of health information.Getty ImagesHow effective is the eye at revealing the health of our heart?<\/p>\n

A 2025 study<\/a> found an eye scan could predict the likelihood of a person having a heart attack or stroke in the next decade with 70 per cent accuracy. Meanwhile, a study published in September<\/a> found people with a thinning of their retinal layers had a 27 per cent higher risk of atrial fibrillation.<\/p>\n

And on Wednesday, the Heart Foundation awarded the Vanguard Grant<\/a>, its most prestigious funding grant for research, to biomedical engineer and researcher Dr Hadi Afsharan, who works alongside Dwivedi at UWA.<\/p>\n

They have developed a special scan using polarisation, in addition to the standard light used in an eye scan, to detect changes in the walls of the vessels including thickening and structural breakdown.<\/p>\n

\"DrDr Hadi Afsharan.<\/p>\n

This allows them to detect coronary artery disease (CAD), Australia\u2019s leading cause of death, with 80 per cent accuracy.<\/p>\n

The scan takes about four seconds, it doesn\u2019t require eye drops, and analysis is done in less than 30 seconds. It is a non-invasive alternative that can potentially
improve risk screening for heart disease and be an affordable alternative to calcium scoring, which is non-invasive but exposes the patient to radiation and doesn\u2019t detect soft plaques.<\/p>\n

\u201cSoft plaques are the most important factor in heart attacks,\u201d Afsharan says.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur early results are very encouraging. People with heart disease have clearly different scores from those without it, and the scores rise as the disease gets worse,\u201d adds Dwivedi. \u201cWe turn them into one simple score, a bit like body mass index, but for your blood vessels.\u201d<\/p>\n

If eye scans are effective, why aren\u2019t we using them already?<\/p>\n

The field of oculomics<\/a> \u2013 the use of non-invasive eye imaging and artificial intelligence as a health-screening tool \u2013 is about a decade old, says Professor Jason Kovacic, the chief executive of the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile the progress is exciting, it hasn\u2019t yet undergone any major clinical trials \u2013 that I am aware of \u2013 to prove efficacy in terms of changing management or reducing rates of heart attack or stroke or death,\u201d Kovacic says.<\/p>\n

Another issue is that findings are still dependent on expert interpretation of the scan.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe prototype scanner developed by Afsharan, Dwivedi and their colleagues.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomeone like Tanya [Trinh] probably can pick up subtle signs in retinal vessels better than [someone else] across the road,\u201d says Kiat, who is a co-founder of wellbeing platform TAIK Health.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith AI it will be easy to integrate all this data so that it is the press of a button and the rest is done by a database based on thousands and thousands and thousands of retinal vessels.\u201d<\/p>\n

Training the AI model on more patients is one of the next steps.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are teaching a computer to do that work automatically,\u201d Dwivedi says. \u201cThat means an optometrist or a GP could do the scan and get a clear result straight away, without waiting for a specialist to review the images.\u201d<\/p>\n

That matters most for those in remote communities, who often live far from hospitals that offer heart scans.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"Swollen<\/a><\/p>\n

They will also compare the eye scan with standard heart tests and give the equipment to other hospitals and research groups to test it independently.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter that, we plan to trial a portable version in local optometrists and GP clinics,\u201d Dwivedi says. \u201cLike any new medical test, it will also need regulatory approval before it can be used routinely.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a process that may take up to five years.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf all goes well, a quick eye scan during a routine check-up could tell us who needs a closer look at their heart,\u201d he says. \u201cThat would mean finding heart disease earlier, and sparing many people tests they do not need.\u201d<\/p>\n

Make the most of your health, relationships, fitness and nutrition with our Live Well newsletter. Get it in your inbox<\/a> every Monday.<\/p>\n

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Close\"SarahSarah Berry<\/a> is a lifestyle and health writer at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via X<\/a> or email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"October 30, 2026 \u2014 5:00am Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":945536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[64,63,137],"class_list":["post-945535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=945535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/945536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=945535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=945535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=945535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}