the medical imaging device 110 the received digital image and or the received mri image are processed by the processing unit 130 to obtain a chronic disease risk index in the following referred to as dri the processing of the digital image and or the mri image is based on reference data available on a reference database 150 the processing unit 130 has appropriate interfaces for communication with the reference database 150 in order to acquire the reference data the dri is indicative to a patient afflicted with a chronic disease such as diabetes or cerebral and or cardiovascular ailments or conditions based on the dri appropriate treatment can be commenced or the patient can be scheduled for further diagnostic measures the high reliability of the dri and its wide scope for disease detection allows rendering further expensive diagnostic treatments superfluous the inventive system therefore contributes to substantial savings to the health system the inventive method according to the present invention for calculating the dri rests on the physiological observation that properties of certain physiological features within the human eye can be used advantageously for the detection of a large number of cerebral or cardiovascular chronic diseases the physiological features can be acquired in a comparably cheap manner by using the digital camera 120 the tables 1 2.