Neurofilament Light application online

The Neurofilament Light (NfL) is a biomarker for axioanl damage which is an indicator for neurodegenrative diseases such as Alzheimer’s. To help doctors in diagnosing neurodegenerative diseases, the Amsterdam UMC together with other research groups gathered a large set of reference values of patient’s Nfl values and ages for different types of dementia and used these in an online application, the NfL-app. In this app a doctor can enter the patient’s NfL value and his/her age and plot this on top of the reference sets of different forms of dementia. The reference sets are plotted using a predictive model that allows doctors to determine which type of dementia the patient is likely suffering from.
The NfL application was developed by the Tech Labs of the Network Institute together with Eline Willemse of the Amsterdam UMC. The app was first envisioned as a tablet application that doctors could carry around with them. After a first version it was decided that an online version would be the best solution. Over the summer of 2020 we ported the software to the Shiny-app platform that offers users an interactive and online visual interface to their data based on R.

If you want to try the NfL-app for yourself, please feel free to give it a go at: https://mybiomarkers.shinyapps.io/Neurofilament

NfL application

This project was made possible by a grant of the Weston Brain Institute (Selfridges Group Foundation).