Parametric model for the 3D reconstruction of individual fovea shape from OCT data

As revealed by optical coherence tomography (OCT), the shape of the fovea may vary greatly among individuals. However, none of the hitherto available mathematical descriptions comprehensively reproduces all individual characteristics such as foveal depth, slope, naso-temporal asymmetry, and others. Here, a novel mathematical approach is presented to obtain a very accurate model of the complete 3D foveal surface of an individual, by utilizing recent developments in OCT. For this purpose, a new formula was developed serving as a simple but very flexible way to represent a given fovea. An extensive description of the used model parameters, as well as, of the complete method of reconstructing a foveal surface from OCT data, is presented. Noteworthy, the formula analytically provides characteristic foveal parameters and thus allows for extensive quantification. The present approach was verified on 432 OCT scans and has proved to be able to capture the whole range of asymmetric foveal shapes with high accuracy (i.e. a mean fit error of 1.40 μm).