Performances of artificial intelligence in detecting pathologic myopia: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Pathologic myopia (PM) is a major cause of severe visual impairment and blindness, and current applications of artificial intelligence (AI) have covered the diagnosis and classification of PM. This meta-analysis and systematic review aimed to evaluate the overall performance of AI-based models in detecting PM and related complications.

We searched PubMed, Scopus, Embase, Web of Science and IEEE Xplore for eligible studies before Dec 20, 2022. The methodological quality of included studies was evaluated using the Quality Assessment for Diagnostic Accuracy Studies (QUADAS-2). We calculated the pooled sensitivity (SEN), specificity (SPE) and the summary area under the curve (AUC) using a random effects model, to evaluate the performance of AI in the detection of PM based on fundus or optical coherence tomography (OCT) images.

22 studies were included in the systematic review, and 14 of them were included in the quantitative analysis. Of all included studies, SEN and SPE ranged from 80.0% to 98.7% and from 79.5% to 100.0% for PM detection, respectively. For the detection of PM, the summary AUC was 0.99 (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.97 to 0.99), and the pooled SEN and SPE were 0.95 (95% CI 0.92 to 0.96) and 0.97 (95% CI: 0.94 to 0.98), respectively. For the detection of PM-related choroid neovascularization (CNV), the summary AUC was 0.99 (95% CI: 0.97 to 0.99).

Our review demonstrated the excellent performance of current AI algorithms in detecting PM and related complications based on fundus and OCT images.