Using images of the optic disc in the eye, the cup-to-disc ratio (CDR) can be calculated by dividing the vertical cup diameter (VCD) by the vertical disc diameter (VDD).
Glaucoma is a progressive eye disease that eventually causes blindness and has no true cure. Yet, early detection of glaucoma offers options to slow down its development, but too many people notice symptoms much too late for effective therapy. Intraocular pressure sensing is currently the go-to method, but it’s not effective for screening the general public before any symptoms are reported.
Scientists at A*STAR Institute for Infocomm Research in Singapore have developed a new method that utilizes high resolution imaging of the optic disk (optic nerve head) to detect the elongation of the optic cup, an area in the center of the disk, which usually happens before any noticeable changes in vision are noticed by someone with early stage glaucoma. The system involves automatic superpixel segmentation of the image into tiny quadrants and detection of the area of the cup and the disk. The ratio between the vertical heights of the two turns out to correlate pretty well with confirmed glaucoma diagnoses. As importantly, the system is small and cheap enough to be used to screen entire populations and help a lot more people live longer with healthy vision.
Study in IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging: Superpixel Classification Based Optic Disc and Optic Cup Segmentation for Glaucoma Screening…
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