A quantitative method for assessing the quality of meibomian glands.
Meibomian gland dysfunction is a common cause of dry eye syndrome which can also lead to eyelid inflammation. Today, diagnostics of meibomian glands is not fully automatic yet and is based on a qualitative assessment made by an ophthalmologist. Therefore, this article proposes a new automatic analysis method which provides a quantitative assessment of meibomian gland dysfunction.



The new algorithm involves a sequence of operations: image acquisition (acquisition of data from OCULUS Keratograph® 5M); image pre-processing (image conversion to gray levels, median filtering, removal of uneven lighting, normalization); main image processing (binarization, morphological opening, labeling, Gaussian filtering, skeletonization, distance transform, watersheds). The algorithm was implemented in Matlab with Image Processing Toolbox (Matlab: Version 7.11.0.584, R2010b) on a PC running Windows 7 Professional, 64-bit with the Intel Core i7-4960X CPU @ 3.60GHz.



The algorithm described in this article has the following features: it is fully automatic, provides fully reproducible results - sensitivity of 99.3% and specificity of 97.5% in the diagnosis of meibomian glands, and is insensitive to parameter changes. The time of image analysis for a single subject does not exceed 0.5s. Currently, the presented algorithm is tested in the Railway Hospital in Katowice, Poland.
Department of Biomedical Computer Systems, University of Silesia, Faculty of Computer Science and Materials Science, Institute of Computer Science, ul. Będzińska 39, Sosnowiec 41-200, Poland. Electronic address: robert.koprowski@us.edu.pl.
Robert
R
Koprowski
School of Pharmacy, Medical University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland. Electronic address: swilczynski@sum.edu.pl.
Sławomir
S
Wilczyński
School of Pharmacy, Medical University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland. Electronic address: polczyk@sum.edu.pl.
Paweł
P
Olczyk
Department of Ophthalmology, District Railway Hospital, ul. Panewnicka 65, 40-760 Katowice, Poland. Electronic address: atrum2@gmail.com.
Anna
A
Nowińska
Department of Ophthalmology, District Railway Hospital, ul. Panewnicka 65, 40-760 Katowice, Poland. Electronic address: weglarz.beata@gmail.com.
Beata
B
Węglarz
Department of Ophthalmology, District Railway Hospital, ul. Panewnicka 65, 40-760 Katowice, Poland. Electronic address: wylegala@gmail.com.
Edward
E
Wylęgała
D000465:Algorithms; D005141:Eyelid Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000473:pathology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D008537:Meibomian Glands / Q000473:pathology*
Algorithm; Biomedical; Image processing; Matlab; Meibography