A novel method for segmentation of Infrared Scanning Laser Ophthalmoscope (IR-SLO) images of retina

Infrared retinal images for flashless detection of macular edema

This study evaluates the use of infrared (IR) images of the retina, obtained without flashes of light, for machine-based detection of macular oedema (ME). A total of 41 images of 21 subjects, here with 23 cases and 18 controls, were studied. Histogram and gray-level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) parameters were extracted from the IR retinal images. The diagnostic performance of the histogram and GLCM parameters was calculated in hindsight based on the known labels of each image. The results from the one-way ANOVA indicated there was a significant difference between ME eyes and the controls when using GLCM features, with the correlation feature having the highest area under the curve (AUC) (A_Z) value. The performance of the proposed method was also evaluated using a support vector machine (SVM) classifier that gave sensitivity and specificity of 100%. This research shows that the texture of the IR images of the retina has a significant difference between ME eyes and the controls and that it can be considered for machine-based detection of ME without requiring flashes of light.

Relation Between Retinal Vasculature and Retinal Thickness in Macular Edema

This study has investigated the relationship of the retinal vasculature and the retinal thickness for Macular Edema (ME) subjects. Ninety sets of Fluorescein Angiograph (FA) and Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) of 54 participants were analyzed. Multivariate analysis using the binary logistic regression model was used to study the association between vessel parameters and retinal thickness. The results reveal retinal vessel feature i.e. fractal dimension (FD) as the most sensitive parameter to the changes in retinal thickness associated with ME. Thus, indicating a direct relationship between the retinal vasculature and retinal thickness which is caused due to neovascular causing exudates, leakages and hemorrhages, with applications for alternate modality for detection of ME.