Analysis of Retinal Image Data to Support Glaucoma Diagnosis

Fundus kamera je široce dostupné zobrazovací zařízení, které umožňuje relativně rychlé a nenákladné vyšetření zadního segmentu oka – sítnice. Z těchto důvodů se mnoho výzkumných pracovišť zaměřuje právě na vývoj automatických metod diagnostiky nemocí sítnice s využitím fundus fotografií. Tato dizertační práce analyzuje současný stav vědeckého poznání v oblasti diagnostiky glaukomu s využitím fundus kamery a navrhuje novou metodiku hodnocení vrstvy nervových vláken (VNV) na sítnici pomocí texturní analýzy. Spolu s touto metodikou je navržena metoda segmentace cévního řečiště sítnice, jakožto další hodnotný příspěvek k současnému stavu řešené problematiky. Segmentace cévního řečiště rovněž slouží jako nezbytný krok předcházející analýzu VNV. Vedle toho práce publikuje novou volně dostupnou databázi snímků sítnice se zlatými standardy pro účely hodnocení automatických metod segmentace cévního řečiště.Fundus camera is widely available imaging device enabling fast and cheap examination of the human retina. Hence, many researchers focus on development of automatic methods towards assessment of various retinal diseases via fundus images. This dissertation summarizes recent state-of-the-art in the field of glaucoma diagnosis using fundus camera and proposes a novel methodology for assessment of the retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) via texture analysis. Along with it, a method for the retinal blood vessel segmentation is introduced as an additional valuable contribution to the recent state-of-the-art in the field of retinal image processing. Segmentation of the blood vessels also serves as a necessary step preceding evaluation of the RNFL via the proposed methodology. In addition, a new publicly available high-resolution retinal image database with gold standard data is introduced as a novel opportunity for other researches to evaluate their segmentation algorithms.

A Survey on Evolutionary Computation for Computer Vision and Image Analysis: Past, Present, and Future Trends

Computer vision (CV) is a big and important field in artificial intelligence covering a wide range of applications. Image analysis is a major task in CV aiming to extract, analyse and understand the visual content of images. However, imagerelated tasks are very challenging due to many factors, e.g., high variations across images, high dimensionality, domain expertise requirement, and image distortions. Evolutionary computation (EC) approaches have been widely used for image analysis with significant achievement. However, there is no comprehensive survey of existing EC approaches to image analysis. To fill this gap, this paper provides a comprehensive survey covering all essential EC approaches to important image analysis tasks including edge detection, image segmentation, image feature analysis, image classification, object detection, and others. This survey aims to provide a better understanding of evolutionary computer vision (ECV) by discussing the contributions of different approaches and exploring how and why EC is used for CV and image analysis. The applications, challenges, issues, and trends associated to this research field are also discussed and summarised to provide further guidelines and opportunities for future research

Artificial Intelligence Algorithms for Eye Banking

Eye banking plays a critical role in modern medicine by providing cornea tissues for transplantation to restore vision for millions of people worldwide. The evaluation of corneal endothelium is done by measuring the corneal endothelial cell density (ECD). Unfortunately, the current system to measure ECD is manual, time-consuming, and error prone. Furthermore, the impact of social behaviors and biological conditions on corneal endothelium and corneal transplant success is largely unexplored. To overcome these challenges, this dissertation aims to develop tools for corneal endothelial image and data analysis that enhance the efficiency and quality of the cornea transplants. In the first study, an image processing algorithm is developed to analyze corneal endothelial images captured by a Konan CellChek specular microscope. The algorithm successfully identifies the region of interest, filters the image, and employs stochastic watershed segmentation to determine cell boundaries and evaluate endothelial cell density (ECD). The proposed algorithm achieves a high correlation with manual counts (R2 = 0.98) and has an average analysis time of 2.5 seconds. In the second study, a deep learning-based cell segmentation algorithm called Mobile-CellNet is proposed to estimate ECD. This technique addresses the limitations of classical algorithms and creates a more robust and highly efficient algorithm. The approach achieves a mean absolute error of 4.06% for ECD on the test set, similar to U-Net but with significantly fewer floating-point operations and parameters. The third study explores the correlation between alcohol abuse and corneal endothelial morphology in a donor pool of 5,624 individuals. Multivariable regression analysis shows that alcohol abuse is associated with a reduction in endothelial cell density, an increase in the coefficient of variation, and a decrease in percent hexagonality. These studies highlight the potential of big data and artificial algorithms in accurately and efficiently analyzing corneal images and donor medical data to improve the efficiency of eye banking and patient outcomes. By automating the analysis of corneal images and exploring the impact of social behaviors and biological conditions on corneal endothelial morphology, we can enhance the quality and availability of cornea transplants and ultimately improve the lives of millions of people worldwide

Deep learning for diabetic retinopathy detection and classification based on fundus images: A review.

Diabetic Retinopathy is a retina disease caused by diabetes mellitus and it is the leading cause of blindness globally. Early detection and treatment are necessary in order to delay or avoid vision deterioration and vision loss. To that end, many artificial-intelligence-powered methods have been proposed by the research community for the detection and classification of diabetic retinopathy on fundus retina images. This review article provides a thorough analysis of the use of deep learning methods at the various steps of the diabetic retinopathy detection pipeline based on fundus images. We discuss several aspects of that pipeline, ranging from the datasets that are widely used by the research community, the preprocessing techniques employed and how these accelerate and improve the models' performance, to the development of such deep learning models for the diagnosis and grading of the disease as well as the localization of the disease's lesions. We also discuss certain models that have been applied in real clinical settings. Finally, we conclude with some important insights and provide future research directions

Machine Learning Approaches for Automated Glaucoma Detection using Clinical Data and Optical Coherence Tomography Images

Glaucoma is a multi-factorial, progressive blinding optic-neuropathy. A variety of factors, including genetics, vasculature, anatomy, and immune factors, are involved. Worldwide more than 80 million people are affected by glaucoma, and around 300,000 in Australia, where 50% remain undiagnosed. Untreated glaucoma can lead to blindness. Early detection by Artificial intelligence (AI) is crucial to accelerate the diagnosis process and can prevent further vision loss. Many proposed AI systems have shown promising performance for automated glaucoma detection using two-dimensional (2D) data. However, only a few studies had optimistic outcomes for glaucoma detection and staging. Moreover, the automated AI system still faces challenges in diagnosing at the clinicians’ level due to the lack of interpretability of the ML algorithms and integration of multiple clinical data. AI technology would be welcomed by doctors and patients if the "black box" notion is overcome by developing an explainable, transparent AI system with similar pathological markers used by clinicians as the sign of early detection and progression of glaucomatous damage. Therefore, the thesis aimed to develop a comprehensive AI model to detect and stage glaucoma by incorporating a variety of clinical data and utilising advanced data analysis and machine learning (ML) techniques. The research first focuses on optimising glaucoma diagnostic features by combining structural, functional, demographic, risk factor, and optical coherence tomography (OCT) features. The significant features were evaluated using statistical analysis and trained in ML algorithms to observe the detection performance. Three crucial structural ONH OCT features: cross-sectional 2D radial B-scan, 3D vascular angiography and temporal-superior-nasal-inferior-temporal (TSNIT) B-scan, were analysed and trained in explainable deep learning (DL) models for automated glaucoma prediction. The explanation behind the decision making of DL models were successfully demonstrated using the feature visualisation. The structural features or distinguished affected regions of TSNIT OCT scans were precisely localised for glaucoma patients. This is consistent with the concept of explainable DL, which refers to the idea of making the decision-making processes of DL models transparent and interpretable to humans. However, artifacts and speckle noise often result in misinterpretation of the TSNIT OCT scans. This research also developed an automated DL model to remove the artifacts and noise from the OCT scans, facilitating error-free retinal layers segmentation, accurate tissue thickness estimation and image interpretation. Moreover, to monitor and grade glaucoma severity, the visual field (VF) test is commonly followed by clinicians for treatment and management. Therefore, this research uses the functional features extracted from VF images to train ML algorithms for staging glaucoma from early to advanced/severe stages. Finally, the selected significant features were used to design and develop a comprehensive AI model to detect and grade glaucoma stages based on the data quantity and availability. In the first stage, a DL model was trained with TSNIT OCT scans, and its output was combined with significant structural and functional features and trained in ML models. The best-performed ML model achieved an area under the curve (AUC): 0.98, an accuracy of 97.2%, a sensitivity of 97.9%, and a specificity of 96.4% for detecting glaucoma. The model achieved an overall accuracy of 90.7% and an F1 score of 84.0% for classifying normal, early, moderate, and advanced-stage glaucoma. In conclusion, this thesis developed and proposed a comprehensive, evidence-based AI model that will solve the screening problem for large populations and relieve experts from manually analysing a slew of patient data and associated misinterpretation problems. Moreover, this thesis demonstrated three structural OCT features that could be added as excellent diagnostic markers for precise glaucoma diagnosis

Image Processing and Analysis for Preclinical and Clinical Applications

Radiomics is one of the most successful branches of research in the field of image processing and analysis, as it provides valuable quantitative information for the personalized medicine. It has the potential to discover features of the disease that cannot be appreciated with the naked eye in both preclinical and clinical studies. In general, all quantitative approaches based on biomedical images, such as positron emission tomography (PET), computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), have a positive clinical impact in the detection of biological processes and diseases as well as in predicting response to treatment. This Special Issue, “Image Processing and Analysis for Preclinical and Clinical Applications”, addresses some gaps in this field to improve the quality of research in the clinical and preclinical environment. It consists of fourteen peer-reviewed papers covering a range of topics and applications related to biomedical image processing and analysis

Biometrics

Biometrics uses methods for unique recognition of humans based upon one or more intrinsic physical or behavioral traits. In computer science, particularly, biometrics is used as a form of identity access management and access control. It is also used to identify individuals in groups that are under surveillance. The book consists of 13 chapters, each focusing on a certain aspect of the problem. The book chapters are divided into three sections: physical biometrics, behavioral biometrics and medical biometrics. The key objective of the book is to provide comprehensive reference and text on human authentication and people identity verification from both physiological, behavioural and other points of view. It aims to publish new insights into current innovations in computer systems and technology for biometrics development and its applications. The book was reviewed by the editor Dr. Jucheng Yang, and many of the guest editors, such as Dr. Girija Chetty, Dr. Norman Poh, Dr. Loris Nanni, Dr. Jianjiang Feng, Dr. Dongsun Park, Dr. Sook Yoon and so on, who also made a significant contribution to the book

Detection and Classification of Diabetic Retinopathy Pathologies in Fundus Images

Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) is a disease that affects up to 80% of diabetics around the world. It is the second greatest cause of blindness in the Western world, and one of the leading causes of blindness in the U.S. Many studies have demonstrated that early treatment can reduce the number of sight-threatening DR cases, mitigating the medical and economic impact of the disease. Accurate, early detection of eye disease is important because of its potential to reduce rates of blindness worldwide. Retinal photography for DR has been promoted for decades for its utility in both disease screening and clinical research studies. In recent years, several research centers have presented systems to detect pathology in retinal images. However, these approaches apply specialized algorithms to detect specific types of lesion in the retina. In order to detect multiple lesions, these systems generally implement multiple algorithms. Furthermore, some of these studies evaluate their algorithms on a single dataset, thus avoiding potential problems associated with the differences in fundus imaging devices, such as camera resolution. These methodologies primarily employ bottom-up approaches, in which the accurate segmentation of all the lesions in the retina is the basis for correct determination. A disadvantage of bottom-up approaches is that they rely on the accurate segmentation of all lesions in order to measure performance. On the other hand, top-down approaches do not depend on the segmentation of specific lesions. Thus, top-down methods can potentially detect abnormalities not explicitly used in their training phase. A disadvantage of these methods is that they cannot identify specific pathologies and require large datasets to build their training models. In this dissertation, I merged the advantages of the top-down and bottom-up approaches to detect DR with high accuracy. First, I developed an algorithm based on a top-down approach to detect abnormalities in the retina due to DR. By doing so, I was able to evaluate DR pathologies other than microaneurysms and exudates, which are the main focus of most current approaches. In addition, I demonstrated good generalization capacity of this algorithm by applying it to other eye diseases, such as age-related macular degeneration. Due to the fact that high accuracy is required for sight-threatening conditions, I developed two bottom-up approaches, since it has been proven that bottom-up approaches produce more accurate results than top-down approaches for particular structures. Consequently, I developed an algorithm to detect exudates in the macula. The presence of this pathology is considered to be a surrogate for clinical significant macular edema (CSME), a sight-threatening condition of DR. The analysis of the optic disc is usually not taken into account in DR screening systems. However, there is a pathology called neovascularization that is present in advanced stages of DR, making its detection of crucial clinical importance. In order to address this problem, I developed an algorithm to detect neovascularization in the optic disc. These algorithms are based on amplitude-modulation and frequency-modulation (AM-FM) representations, morphological image processing methods, and classification algorithms. The methods were tested on a diverse set of large databases and are considered to be the state-of the art in this field