Prediction of retinopathy progression using deep learning on retinal images within the Scottish screening programme.

We showed that, compared with using the current retinopathy grade, DL of fundus images significantly improves the prediction of incident referable retinopathy before the next screening episode. This can impact screening recall interval policy positively, for example, by reducing the expected time with referable disease for a fixed workload-which we show as an exemplar. Additionally, it could be used to optimise workload for a fixed sojourn time.