Age-related changes in dynamic corneal backscatter observed in Scheimpflug imaging

Corneal visualization Scheimpflug technology (Corvis ST) has the potential to indirectly provide information on corneal structure via the analysis of statistical properties of the backscatter. The aim of this work was to ascertain whether there are age-related changes in the dynamics of corneal backscatter during an air-puffed induced corneal deformation. Retrospective data from Corvis ST measurements of 151 young subjects (19-30 years) and 82 older subjects (50-87 years) were considered. Each measurement consisted of 140 frames (sampling frequency: 4330 fps). For every frame the cornea was first segmented, then regions of interest, encompassing temporal, central and nasal parts of cornea were selected, to which the parameters of Weibull distribution (scale and shape) were fitted, leading to time series of the estimated parameters. Apparent differences were found between the parameters of Weibull distribution between the two considered groups that manifest themselves mostly in the nasal region of the cornea. However, those differences cannot be attributed to the age alone. For this, a normalization method is proposed that leads to a much better separation between the groups in all considered regions. Clinical Relevance- The parameters of the corneal backscat-ter are widely used to asses corneal clarity (so-called corneal densitometry). Recently the parameters of Weibull distribution fitted to the corneal backscatter data have been used to support diagnosis of keratoconus. This work contributes to the assessment of corneal clarity by identifying the apparent age-related differences in those parameters when dynamic raw data is considered highlighting the need for such parameters to be appropriately normalized. Further it shown that the shape parameter of Weibull distribution unlike the scale parameter carries that information already for the raw non-normalized data.