Early Glaucoma Detection by Using Style Transfer to Predict Retinal Nerve Fiber Layer Thickness Distribution on the...

We aimed to develop a deep learning (DL)-based algorithm for early glaucoma detection based on color fundus photographs that provides information on defects in the retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) and its thickness from the mapping and translating relations of spectral domain OCT (SD-OCT) thickness maps.

Developing and evaluating an artificial intelligence detection tool.

Pretraining paired data of color fundus photographs and SD-OCT images from 189 healthy participants and 371 patients with early glaucoma were used.

The variational autoencoder (VAE) network training architecture was used for training, and the correlation between the fundus photographs and RNFL thickness distribution was determined through the deep neural network. The reference standard was defined as a vertical cup-to-disc ratio of ≥0.7, other typical changes in glaucomatous optic neuropathy, and RNFL defects. Convergence indicates that the VAE has learned a distribution that would enable us to produce corresponding synthetic OCT scans.

Similarly to wide-field OCT scanning, the proposed model can extract the results of RNFL thickness analysis. The structural similarity index measure (SSIM) and peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) were used to assess signal strength and the similarity in the structure of the color fundus images converted to an RNFL thickness distribution model. The differences between the model-generated images and original images were quantified.

We developed and validated a novel DL-based algorithm to extract thickness information from the color space of fundus images similarly to that from OCT images and to use this information to regenerate RNFL thickness distribution images. The generated thickness map was sufficient for clinical glaucoma detection, and the generated images were similar to ground truth (PSNR: 19.31 decibels; SSIM: 0.44). The inference results were similar to the OCT-generated original images in terms of the ability to predict RNFL thickness distribution.

The proposed technique may aid clinicians in early glaucoma detection, especially when only color fundus photographs are available.