New Clinical Study Supports the Use of NeuraLight’s Oculometric Platform as a Viable Adjunct Assessment Tool in ALS

April 25, 2023

Results of a clinical study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Frontotemporal Degeneration, describe the use of NeuraLight’s software-based platform in an ALS clinical drug trial, and the correlation of oculometric data with the gold-standard clinical assessment scale for ALS patients (ALSFRS-R). The study, which was led by world-renowned ALS researcher Prof. Vivian E. Drory, Director of the Neuromuscular Diseases Unit at the Department of Neurology at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center and Tel Aviv University’s Sackler School of Medicine, reveals the potential benefit of NeuraLight’s digital oculometric measurement technology as an adjunct assessment tool for ALS patients.

 

Published under the title “Correlation between oculometric measures and clinical assessment in ALS patients participating in a phase IIb clinical drug trial,” the study presented the results of an evaluation of a cohort of 32 ALS patients enrolled in a Phase IIb clinical drug trial using both ALSFRS-R and NeuraLight’s novel software-based Oculometric Measures (OM) platform. The main results of the study were:


  • Correlations between oculomotor deficits and patients’ clinical presentation were found, which support the results of previous studies, indicating the importance of OM as a tool to reflect ALS patients’ clinical status.

  • Differences between OM in ALS patients and healthy subjects performing the same visual tasks, which implies the potential of using OM to diagnose ALS in patients in the future, as their oculometric patterns change.

  • Using OM as an adjunct tool in a clinical drug trial is useful, since it can provide more data on patients’ clinical status, thus contributing to drug development process, as pointed out in previous drug trials. 

 

"In recent years, we’ve seen a positive trend towards a more personalized clinical approach in the diagnosis and assessment of ALS patients, among them the use of different objective biomarkers,” shared Prof. Drory. “We used NeuraLight's software-based platform to extract different oculometric measures as objective measurements for ALS patients. We found a correlation between the eye movement data retrieved using NeuraLight's technology and motor disability as measured by ALSFRS-R. In the future, we hope that this technology will be implemented as a part of the routine assessment of ALS patients, as well as in clinical drug trials, thus shortening the time for drug development and benefiting our patients."

 

Current Clinical Assessment of ALS 

As it stands today, ALS is an incurable progressive neurodegenerative disease that causes complete paralysis and death within a mean of 2-5 years from diagnosis. Clinical assessment of disease severity currently relies on the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Functional Rating Scale (ALSFRS-R), which measures 12 aspects of physical function ranging from one's ability to swallow and use utensils to climbing stairs and breathing. While widely accepted as the gold standard for ALS rating, the ALSFRS-R has a high inter- and intra-rater variability given that the scale is subjective in nature. The absence of objective measurement tools for the disease presents challenges for neurologists and researchers  aiming to correctly assess disease status and progression, as well as the potential effects that new investigational therapeutics may have on patients.

 

Importance of Oculometric Measures 

Oculometric measures (OM) are used as a tool to evaluate eye movement abnormalities, a crucial component of neurological examinations to diagnose neurodegenerative disorders. Presenting a cutting-edge technology using proprietary computer vision and deep learning algorithms, NeuraLight’s platform extracts dozens of OM and combines them to support objective measurement, which can reflect a patient’s neurological status. The benefit of OM in assessing various neurological disorders, including ALS, has been studied extensively in the last decades.

 

To learn more about NeuraLight’s technology, please visit: NeuraLight.ai/Technology.

 

About NeuraLight

NeuraLight is on a mission to transform the lives of billions of people impacted by neurological disorders by digitizing neurological evaluation and care. Its AI-driven platform integrates multiple digital markers to accelerate and improve drug development, monitoring, and precision care for patients with neurological disorders. The technology driving the platform includes proprietary deep learning algorithms which automatically extract a host of digital oculometric markers from facial videos captured with a standard webcam, supporting distributed trial design. NeuraLight’s founders are repeat entrepreneurs and industry veterans (including both the co-founder of Chorus.ai and the founding CTO of Flatiron Health). The company is supported by renowned neurologists and two Nobel laureates as well as a stellar Scientific Advisory Board, and have raised over $30.5M to date.