Quantitative analysis of retinal OCT

Abstract

Clinical acceptance of 3-D OCT retinal imaging brought rapid development of quantitative 3-D analysis of retinal layers, vasculature, retinal lesions as well as facilitated new research in retinal diseases. One of the cornerstones of many such analyses is segmentation and thickness quantification of retinal layers and the choroid, with an inherently 3-D simultaneous multi-layer LOGISMOS (Layered Optimal Graph Image Segmentation for Multiple Objects and Surfaces) segmentation approach being extremely well suited for the task. Once retinal layers are segmented, regional thickness, brightness, or texture-based indices of individual layers can be easily determined and thus contribute to our understanding of retinal or optic nerve head (ONH) disease processes and can be employed for determination of disease status, treatment responses, visual function, etc. Out of many applications, examples provided in this paper focus on image-guided therapy and outcome prediction in age-related macular degeneration and on assessing visual function from retinal layer structure in glaucoma.

Keywords: Choroid; LOGISMOS; Optical coherence tomography (OCT); Quantitative medical imaging; Retina; Visual function.