title: Three-dimensional segmentation and reconstruction of the retinal vasculature from spectral-domain optical coherence tomography.
abstract: We reconstruct the three-dimensional shape and location of the retinal vascular network from commercial spectral-domain (SD) optical coherence tomography (OCT) data. The two-dimensional location of retinal vascular network on the eye fundus is obtained through support vector machines classification of properly defined fundus images from OCT data, taking advantage of the fact that on standard SD-OCT, the incident light beam is absorbed by hemoglobin, creating a shadow on the OCT signal below each perfused vessel. The depth-wise location of the vessel is obtained as the beginning of the shadow. The classification of crossovers and bifurcations within the vascular network is also addressed. We illustrate the feasibility of the method in terms of vessel caliber estimation and the accuracy of bifurcations and crossovers classification.
authors.affiliation: University of Coimbra, Faculty of Medicine, Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Life Sciences, Azinhaga Santa Comba, 3000-548 Coimbra, PortugalbUniversity of Padova, Department of Information Engineering, Via Gradenigo, 6/b, 35131 Padova, Italy.
authors.forename: Pedro
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Guimarães
authors.affiliation: Association for Innovation and Biomedical Research in Light and Image, Azinhaga Santa Comba, 3000-548 Coimbra, PortugaldUniversity of Coimbra, Institute of Systems and Robotics, Pinhal de Marrocos-Polo II, 3030 Coimbra, Portugal.
authors.forename: Pedro
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Rodrigues
authors.affiliation: Association for Innovation and Biomedical Research in Light and Image, Azinhaga Santa Comba, 3000-548 Coimbra, Portugal.
authors.forename: Dirce
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Celorico
authors.affiliation: University of Coimbra, Faculty of Medicine, Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Life Sciences, Azinhaga Santa Comba, 3000-548 Coimbra, PortugaleUniversidade Aberta, Mathematics Section, Department of Science and Technology, Rua da Escola Politécnica 141-
authors.forename: Pedro
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Serranho
authors.affiliation: University of Coimbra, Faculty of Medicine, Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Life Sciences, Azinhaga Santa Comba, 3000-548 Coimbra, Portugal.
authors.forename: Rui
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Bernardes
mesh_terms: D003930:Diabetic Retinopathy / Q000473:pathology; D006801:Humans; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional / Q000379:methods*; D012171:Retinal Vessels / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D041623:Tomography, Optical Coherence / Q000379:methods*