title: Automated segmentation of intraretinal cystoid fluid in optical coherence tomography.
abstract: Cystoid macular edema (CME) is observed in a variety of ocular disorders and is strongly associated with vision loss. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) provides excellent visualization of cystoid fluid, and can assist clinicians in monitoring the progression of CME. Quantitative tools for assessing CME may lead to better metrics for choosing treatment protocols. To address this need, this paper presents a fully automated retinal cyst segmentation technique for OCT image stacks acquired from a commercial scanner. The proposed method includes a computationally fast bilateral filter for speckle denoising while maintaining CME boundaries. The proposed technique was evaluated in images from 16 patients with vitreoretinal disease and three controls. The average sensitivity and specificity for the classification of cystoid regions in CME patients were found to be 91% and 96%, respectively, and the retinal volume occupied by cystoid fluid obtained by the algorithm was found to be accurate within a mean and median volume fraction of 1.9% and 0.8%, respectively.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA. wgary@ad.unc.edu
authors.forename: Gary R
authors.initials: GR
authors.lastname: Wilkins
authors.forename: Odette M
authors.initials: OM
authors.lastname: Houghton
authors.forename: Amy L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Oldenburg
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D006801:Humans; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D008269:Macular Edema / Q000473:pathology*; D010363:Pattern Recognition, Automated / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D042262:Retinoscopy / Q000379:methods*; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D041623:Tomography, Optical Coherence / Q000379:methods*