Abstract
PurposeTo develop a method for automated detection and progression analysis of chorioretinal atrophic lesions using the combined information of standard infrared (IR) and autofluorescence (AF) fundus images.MethodsEighteen eyes (from 16 subjects) with punctate inner choroidopathy were analyzed. Macular IR and blue AF images were acquired in all eyes with a Spectralis HRA+OCT device (Heidelberg Engineering, Heidelberg, Germany). Two clinical experts manually segmented chorioretinal lesions on the AF image. AF images were aligned to the corresponding IR. Two random forest models were trained to classify pixels of lesions, one based on the AF image only, the other based on the aligned IR-AF. The models were validated using a leave-one-out cross-validation and were tested against the manual segmentation to compare their performance. A time series from one eye was identified and used to evaluate the method based on the IR-AF in a case study.ResultsThe method based on the AF images correctly classified 95% of the pixels (i.e., in vs. out of the lesion) with a Dice's coefficient of 0.80. The method based on the combined IR-AF correctly classified 96% of the pixels with a Dice's coefficient of 0.84.ConclusionsThe automated segmentation of chorioretinal lesions using IR and AF shows closer alignment to manual segmentation than the same method based on AF only. Merging information from multimodal images improves the automatic and objective segmentation of chorioretinal lesions even when based on a small dataset.Translational RelevanceMerged information from multimodal images improves segmentation performance of chorioretinal lesions.
Highlights
Punctuate inner choroidopathy (PIC) is a rare condition that was first recognized by Watzke in 1984 as a group of the White Dot Syndromes.[1]
Symptoms can disappear with the resolution of the lesion, but about 40% of the patients experience more severe visual loss with the development of choroidal neovascularization (CNV).[3,4,5]
We present a proof of concept for a machine learning algorithm, which combines the information of IR and AF images to produce an automatic segmentation of PIC atrophic lesions
Summary
Punctuate inner choroidopathy (PIC) is a rare condition that was first recognized by Watzke in 1984 as a group of the White Dot Syndromes.[1] The disease is an inflammatory choroiditis that does not affect the anterior chamber or vitreous cavity. TVST | August 2020 | Vol 9 | No 9 | Article 38 | 2 appearance of multifocal, well-circumscribed, small lesions that resolve in a few weeks, leaving atrophic spots with variable pigmentation. These episodes are symptomatic, with patients reporting blurred central vision, flashes of light, and paracentral scotomas. Symptoms can disappear with the resolution of the lesion, but about 40% of the patients experience more severe visual loss with the development of choroidal neovascularization (CNV).[3,4,5]
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