Validating the Generalizability of Ophthalmic Artificial Intelligence Models on Real-World Clinical Data

This study aims to investigate generalizability of deep learning (DL) models trained on commonly used public fundus images to an instance of real-world data (RWD) for glaucoma diagnosis.

We used Illinois Eye and Ear Infirmary fundus data set as an instance of RWD in addition to six publicly available fundus data sets. We compared the performance of DL-trained models on public data and RWD for glaucoma classification and optic disc (OD) segmentation tasks. For each task, we created models trained on each data set, respectively, and each model was tested on both data sets. We further examined each model's decision-making process and learned embeddings for the glaucoma classification task.

Using public data for the test set, public-trained models outperformed RWD-trained models in OD segmentation and glaucoma classification with a mean intersection over union of 96.3% and mean area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 95.0%, respectively. Using the RWD test set, the performance of public models decreased by 8.0% and 18.4% to 85.6% and 76.6% for OD segmentation and glaucoma classification tasks, respectively. RWD models outperformed public models on RWD test sets by 2.0% and 9.5%, respectively, in OD segmentation and glaucoma classification tasks.

DL models trained on commonly used public data have limited ability to generalize to RWD for classifying glaucoma. They perform similarly to RWD models for OD segmentation.

RWD is a potential solution for improving generalizability of DL models and enabling clinical translations in the care of prevalent blinding ophthalmic conditions, such as glaucoma.