Vuno's 'Ophthalmic Disease Diagnosis Solution' Wins '1st Place' at International Competition

Medical AI company VUNO's AI fundus image analysis solution has demonstrated excellent glaucoma detection capabilities at an international symposium.

Vuno's AI-based fundus image interpretation assistance solution 'Vuno Med Fundus AI'
[Photo by Vuno]

On the 25th, VUNO announced that its AI-based fundus image analysis solution, VUNO Med-Fundus AI, ranked first in the glaucoma detection challenge (JustRAIGS) held at the 2024 International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI 2024), organized by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

Now in its 21st year, ISBI 2024 is an event hosted by IEEE, the world's largest electrical and electronics society, which holds various challenges to evaluate AI technology's disease detection performance across multiple medical fields. This year's glaucoma detection challenge was held to assess the performance of AI algorithms for glaucoma screening using fundus images. A total of 46 teams worldwide participated, with the competition running for about four months since January.

VUNO's fundus research team's deep learning algorithm achieved excellent results in both tasks presented in this competition: ▲classification of glaucoma requiring specialist examination and ▲identification of 10 features in glaucoma images, securing the overall first place. VUNO plans to apply the glaucoma detection technology proven in this competition to VUNO Med-Fundus AI. Previously, VUNO Med-Fundus AI also ranked first in the 2020 Age-related Macular Degeneration Detection Challenge (ADAM) and the 2018 Diabetic Retinopathy Detection Challenge (DeepDRid) at ISBI.

VUNO Med-Fundus AI is the first AI medical device in Korea to assist in diagnosing fundus diseases. Based on AI, it analyzes fundus images to detect the presence of abnormalities and the location of lesions necessary for diagnosing major causes of blindness within seconds. In April, it received approval for integrated review and evaluation as an innovative medical device from the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, enabling non-reimbursed use and laying the foundation for rapid adoption in medical settings. Currently, research and development are underway to upgrade the product with models detecting specific diseases such as glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy.

Lee Yeha, CEO of VUNO, said, “VUNO Med-Fundus AI is a product that has achieved excellent results in various international medical AI competitions and demonstrated high clinical validity through numerous research papers. We will strive to increase the rate of fundus examinations by introducing it to more medical sites as an essential tool in chronic disease management, contributing to improving patients' quality of life and reducing social costs. Furthermore, we will continue efforts to have it officially listed under health insurance in the future.”