title: iDEAS: A web-based system for dry eye assessment.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Dry eye disease is a public health problem, whose multifactorial etiology challenges clinicians and researchers making necessary the collaboration between different experts and centers. The evaluation of the interference patterns observed in the tear film lipid layer is a common clinical test used for dry eye diagnosis. However, it is a time-consuming task with a high degree of intra- as well as inter-observer variability, which makes the use of a computer-based analysis system highly desirable. This work introduces iDEAS (Dry Eye Assessment System), a web-based application to support dry eye diagnosis.
  
  
  METHODS
  iDEAS provides a framework for eye care experts to collaboratively work using image-based services in a distributed environment. It is composed of three main components: the web client for user interaction, the web application server for request processing, and the service module for image analysis. Specifically, this manuscript presents two automatic services: tear film classification, which classifies an image into one interference pattern; and tear film map, which illustrates the distribution of the patterns over the entire tear film.
  
  
  RESULTS
  iDEAS has been evaluated by specialists from different institutions to test its performance. Both services have been evaluated in terms of a set of performance metrics using the annotations of different experts. Note that the processing time of both services has been also measured for efficiency purposes.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  iDEAS is a web-based application which provides a fast, reliable environment for dry eye assessment. The system allows practitioners to share images, clinical information and automatic assessments between remote computers. Additionally, it save time for experts, diminish the inter-expert variability and can be used in both clinical and research settings.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Computación, Universidade da Coruña, Campus de Elviña S/N, 15071 A Coruña, Spain. Electronic address: bremeseiro@udc.es.
authors.forename: Beatriz
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Remeseiro
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Computación, Universidade da Coruña, Campus de Elviña S/N, 15071 A Coruña, Spain. Electronic address: nbarreira@udc.es.
authors.forename: Noelia
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Barreira
authors.affiliation: Servicio de Optometría, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Campus Universitario Sur, 15782 Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Electronic address: carlos.garcia.resua@usc.es.
authors.forename: Carlos
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: García-Resúa
authors.affiliation: Centro de Física, Universidade do Minho, Campus de Gualtar, 4715-057 Braga, Portugal. Electronic address: mlira@fisica.uminho.pt.
authors.forename: Madalena
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lira
authors.affiliation: Servicio de Optometría, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Campus Universitario Sur, 15782 Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Electronic address: mjesus.giraldez@usc.es.
authors.forename: María J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Giráldez
authors.affiliation: Servicio de Optometría, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Campus Universitario Sur, 15782 Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Electronic address: eva.yebra-pimentel@usc.es.
authors.forename: Eva
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Yebra-Pimentel
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Computación, Universidade da Coruña, Campus de Elviña S/N, 15071 A Coruña, Spain. Electronic address: mgpenedo@udc.es.
authors.forename: Manuel G
authors.initials: MG
authors.lastname: Penedo
mesh_terms: D015352:Dry Eye Syndromes / Q000175:diagnosis*; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D013666:Tears
keywords: Dry eye syndrome; Image analysis; Medical application; Pattern recognition; Vision sciences; Web-based system