AI and Ophthalmology: A Nearly Picture Perfect Kinda Match | AAO 2025

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. But images are also dense with data and that is why ophthalmology is the vanguard of specialties using artificial intelligence (AI), explains Alfredo A. Sadun, M.D., Ph.D., chief of ophthalmology at the UCLA’ s Doheny Eye Institute.

“What drives a successful application of AI is data, lots of data. AI is not very good about presenting a particular patient because there's no other patient to compare it to that's identical to them. But data is what gets us over that hump, and a photograph carries a tremendous amount of data,” Sadun said in an interview with Managed Healthcare Executive (MHE). Sadun was one moderators and chairs of a session on artificial intelligence this morning at the American Academy of Ophthalmololgy’s annual meeting in Orlando, Florida. The session was titled “How Artificial Intelligence Influences You and Your Patients.”

Sadun said in the interview with MHE that along with ophthalmology, radiology, pathology and dermatology are leading the way in the adoption of AI. Imaging is central to the practice of all four specialties.

Sadun mentioned images generated by the imaging technologies used in ophthalmology — optical coherence tomography and scanning laser ophthalmology — carry “a ton of data.”