Feature Definition and Comprehensive Analysis on the Robust Identification of Intraretinal Cystoid Regions Using Optical Coherence Tomography Images

Abstract

[Abstract] Currently, optical coherence tomography is one of the most used medical imaging modalities, offering cross-sectional representations of the studied tissues. This image modality is specially relevant for the analysis of the retina, since it is the internal part of the human body that allows an almost direct examination without invasive techniques. One of the most representative cases of use of this medical imaging modality is for the identification and characterization of intraretinal fluid accumulations, critical for the diagnosis of one of the main causes of blindness in developed countries: the Diabetic Macular Edema. The study of these fluid accumulations is particularly interesting, both from the point of view of pattern recognition and from the different branches of health sciences. As these fluid accumulations are intermingled with retinal tissues, they present numerous variants according to their severity, and change their appearance depending on the configuration of the device; they are a perfect subject for an in-depth research, as they are considered to be a problem without a strict solution. In this work, we propose a comprehensive and detailed analysis of the patterns that characterize them. We employed a pool of 11 different texture and intensity feature families (giving a total of 510 markers) which we have analyzed using three different feature selection strategies and seven complementary classification algorithms. By doing so, we have been able to narrow down and explain the factors affecting this kind of accumulations and tissue lesions by means of machine learning techniques with a pipeline specially designed for this purpose.