Eyes Are the Windows to the Soul: Reviewing the Possible Use of the Retina to Indicate Traumatic Brain Injury

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) represents a significant medical concern typically resulting from severe or repetitive mild head impacts. It often results in vision deterioration and can cause sudden death after hospitalization as a result of pathologies. The objective identification options are limited or too invasive to be routinely applied; therefore, we need new tools to identify the severity of the disease. The retina is the only part of the central nervous system that is directly approachable by light and easy to access. In this review, we used an aimed database search, together with a blinded human and artificial intelligence (AI) based scoring system to narrow down the number of articles, based on relevance to the topic. The selected articles went through thorough processing to identify the relevant links in them. Based on this, we hypothesize that the retina can be used as a direct indicator of brain health, including the use of microglia to indicate traumatic brain injury. As an outcome, we concluded that recent developments in technology now allow the imaging of the retinal surface and cells directly to allow retinal cellular and inflammatory assessment and translation of the findings into medical practice.