The following transcript has been edited for clarity.

Hi, I’m Amitha Domalpally, MD, PhD. I am the research director of the Wisconsin Reading Center at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and I also serve as the retina chair for the ARVO annual meeting program committee.

It has been an interesting year. We’ve had over a thousand submissions, and about half of them have been related to artificial intelligence (AI). So we have AI every day, either a poster or a paper session. So there’s lots to look out for—lots of clinical and clinical trial use cases, so fun stuff out there.

On the clinical side, the other half of the submissions have had age-related macular degeneration (AMD) as a dominant topic. In wet AMD, we’ve had phase 3 trials finished in the last couple of years. Those agents are going now into real-world implementation, which is going to be fantastic for the clinicians to look out for. Dry AMD has also emerged as a really strong area, lots of imaging biomarkers and other information out there, along with functional testing. Functional testing tied to AMD has emerged as an important topic, with lots of submissions in that area.

A third area that’s getting momentum is regenerative medicine: stem cell therapy, inherited retinal diseases, and gene therapy. Those 3 have also received lots of submissions; a lot to look out for in that area.

Diabetes and vascular diseases and all other retinopathies also have a representation; important work there. And then, of course, we have the Cogan Award Lecture by Aaron Y. Lee, MD, MSCI, and Cecilia S. Lee, MD, MS, which is related to AI in retina.

To summarize, we have to watch out for our AMD endpoints, for dry AMD, real-world impact of anti-VEGF, clinically relevant AI. I think those are the areas that are going to be the most important. So come over, enjoy ARVO, and enjoy all the social networking also. RP