TY - JOUR
T1 - Summarising the retinal vascular calibres in healthy, diabetic and diabetic retinopathy eyes
AU - Leontidis, Georgios
AU - Al-Diri, Bashir
AU - Hunter, Andrew
N1 - Acknowledgements
This research study was supported by a Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant from the European Commission in the framework of the REVAMMAD ITN (Initial Training Research network), Project number 316990.
PY - 2016/5/1
Y1 - 2016/5/1
N2 - Retinal vessel calibre has been found to be an important biomarker of several retinal diseases, including diabetic retinopathy (DR). Quantifying the retinal vessel calibres is an important step for estimating the central retinal artery and vein equivalents. In this study, an alternative method to the already established branching coefficient (BC) is proposed for summarising the vessel calibres in retinal junctions. This new method combines the mean diameter ratio with an alternative to Murray[U+05F3]s cube law exponent, derived by the fractal dimension,experimentally, and the branch exponent of cerebral vessels, as has been suggested in previous studies with blood flow modelling. For the above calculations, retinal images from healthy, diabetic and DR subjects were used. In addition, the above method was compared with the BC and was also applied to the evaluation of arteriovenous ratio as a biomarker of progression from diabetes to DR in four consecutive years, i.e. three/two/one years before the onset of DR and the first year of DR. Moreover, the retinal arteries and veins around the optic nerve head were also evaluated. The new approach quantifies the vessels more accurately. The decrease in terms of the mean absolute percentage error was between 0.24% and 0.49%, extending at the same time the quantification beyond healthy subjects.
AB - Retinal vessel calibre has been found to be an important biomarker of several retinal diseases, including diabetic retinopathy (DR). Quantifying the retinal vessel calibres is an important step for estimating the central retinal artery and vein equivalents. In this study, an alternative method to the already established branching coefficient (BC) is proposed for summarising the vessel calibres in retinal junctions. This new method combines the mean diameter ratio with an alternative to Murray[U+05F3]s cube law exponent, derived by the fractal dimension,experimentally, and the branch exponent of cerebral vessels, as has been suggested in previous studies with blood flow modelling. For the above calculations, retinal images from healthy, diabetic and DR subjects were used. In addition, the above method was compared with the BC and was also applied to the evaluation of arteriovenous ratio as a biomarker of progression from diabetes to DR in four consecutive years, i.e. three/two/one years before the onset of DR and the first year of DR. Moreover, the retinal arteries and veins around the optic nerve head were also evaluated. The new approach quantifies the vessels more accurately. The decrease in terms of the mean absolute percentage error was between 0.24% and 0.49%, extending at the same time the quantification beyond healthy subjects.
KW - Arteriovenous ratio
KW - Diabetic retinopathy
KW - Gamma ratio
KW - Junction exponent
KW - Vessel calibres
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84962572059&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2016.03.006
DO - 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2016.03.006
M3 - Article
C2 - 27017067
AN - SCOPUS:84962572059
VL - 72
SP - 65
EP - 74
JO - Computers in Biology and Medicine
JF - Computers in Biology and Medicine
SN - 0010-4825
ER -