Swelling of the optic nerve head (ONH) is subjectively assessed by clinicians using the Frisén scale. It is believed that a direct measurement of the ONH volume would serve as a better representation of the swelling. However, a direct measurement requires optic nerve imaging with spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) and 3D segmentation of the resulting images, which is not always available during clinical evaluation. Furthermore, telemedical imaging of the eye at remote locations is more feasible with non-mydriatic fundus cameras which are less costly than OCT imagers. Therefore, there is a critical need to develop a more quantitative analysis of optic nerve swelling on a continuous scale, similar to SD-OCT. Here, we select features from more commonly available 2D fundus images and use them to predict ONH volume. Twenty-six features were extracted from each of 48 color fundus images. The features include attributes of the blood vessels, optic nerve head, and peripapillary retina areas. These features were used in a regression analysis to predict ONH volume, as computed by a segmentation of the SD-OCT image. The results of the regression analysis yielded a mean square error of 2.43 mm³ and a correlation coefficient between computed and predicted volumes of R = 0:771, which suggests that ONH volume may be predicted from fundus features alone.

Date Published: 20 March 2015
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 9414, Medical Imaging 2015: Computer-Aided Diagnosis, 94140F (20 March 2015); doi: 10.1117/12.2081423

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9414:
Medical Imaging 2015: Computer-Aided Diagnosis
Lubomir M. Hadjiiski; Georgia D. Tourassi, Editor(s)