Deep Learning-Based Detection of Reticular Pseudodrusen in Age-Related Macular Degeneration on Optical Coherence Tomography

Abstract

Reticular pseudodrusen (RPD) signify a critical phenotype driving vision loss in age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Their detection is paramount in the clinical management of those with AMD, yet they remain challenging to reliably identify. We thus developed a deep learning (DL) model to segment RPD from 9,800 optical coherence tomography B-scans, and this model produced RPD segmentations that had higher agreement with four retinal specialists (Dice similarity coefficient [DSC]=0·76 [95% confidence interval [CI] 0·71-0·81]) than the agreement amongst the specialists (DSC=0·68, 95% CI=0·63-0·73; p <0·001). In five external test datasets consisting of 1,017 eyes from 812 individuals, the DL model detected RPD with a similar level of performance as two retinal specialists (area-under-the-curve of 0·94 [95% CI=0·92-0·97], 0·95 [95% CI=0·92-0·97] and 0·96 [95% CI=0·94-0·98] respectively; p ≥0·32). This DL model enables the automatic detection and quantification of RPD with expert-level performance, which we have made publicly available.