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Published on: November 6, 2017
Retinal artery-vein caliber grading using color fundus imaging
Alauddin Bhuiyan1, Ryo Kawasaki, Ecosse Lamoureux
1ICT Centre, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, WA 6014, Australia. abhuiyan@unimelb.edu.au
Insights
A new edge-based method accurately measures retinal vessel caliber, Central Retinal Artery Equivalent (CRAE) and Central Retinal Vein Equivalent (CRVE), aiding cardiovascular disease prediction. This automated technique offers high accuracy and reproducibility.
Area of Science:
- Ophthalmology
- Medical Imaging
- Cardiovascular Disease Research
Background:
- Retinal vessel caliber is a key predictor of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs).
- Current methods for measuring Central Retinal Artery Equivalent (CRAE) and Central Retinal Vein Equivalent (CRVE) are manual or semi-automatic, leading to time inefficiency and potential inaccuracies.
- Automated, efficient, and reproducible grading of retinal vessel caliber is crucial but technically challenging.
Purpose of the Study:
- To introduce a novel "edge-based" vessel tracking technique for automated retinal vessel caliber measurement.
- To accurately quantify CRAE and CRVE using the proposed method.
- To evaluate the accuracy and reproducibility of the new technique compared to manual and semi-automatic methods.
Main Methods:
- An "edge-based" vessel tracking algorithm was developed to measure retinal arteriolar and venular caliber.
- The method calculated Central Retinal Artery Equivalent (CRAE) and Central Retinal Vein Equivalent (CRVE).
- Performance was assessed by comparing measurements against manual grading for accuracy and against a semi-automatic method for overall accuracy and reproducibility.
Main Results:
- The proposed technique achieved an average cross-sectional width measurement accuracy of 96.23% compared to manual grading.
- High correlations were observed for overall vessel caliber measurement accuracy: 0.85 for CRAE and 0.92 for CRVE when compared to a semi-automatic method.
- Excellent intra-grader reproducibility was demonstrated, with correlation coefficients of 0.881 for CRAE and 0.875 for CRVE.
Conclusions:
- The developed "edge-based" vessel tracking method provides an accurate and highly reproducible automated approach for measuring retinal vessel caliber (CRAE and CRVE).
- This technique addresses the limitations of current manual and semi-automatic methods, offering a time-efficient solution for CVD risk assessment.
- The high accuracy and reproducibility suggest significant potential for clinical application in cardiovascular health monitoring.
Abstract:
Recent research suggests that retinal vessel caliber (or cross-sectional width) measured from retinal photographs is an important feature for predicting cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). One of the most utilized measures is to quantify retinal arteriolar and venular caliber as the Central Retinal Artery Equivalent (CRAE) and Central Retinal Vein Equivalent (CRVE). However, current computer tools utilize manual or semi-automatic grading methods to estimate CRAE and CRVE. These methods involve a significant amount of grader's time and can add a significant level of inaccuracy due to repetitive nature of grading and intragrader distances. An automatic and time efficient grading of the vessel caliber with highly repeatable measurement is essential, but is technically challenging due to a substantial variation of the retinal blood vessels' properties. In this paper, we propose a new technique to measure the retinal vessel caliber, which is an "edge-based" vessel tracking method. We measured CRAE and CRVE from each of the vessel types. We achieve very high accuracy (average 96.23%) for each of the cross-sectional width measurement compared to manually graded width. For overall vessel caliber measurement accuracy of CRAE and CRVE, we compared the results with an existing semi-automatic method which showed high correlation of 0.85 and 0.92, respectively. The intra-grader reproducibility of our method was high, with the correlation coefficient of 0.881 for CRAE and 0.875 for CRVE.
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