Fully Automatic Retinal Vascular Tortuosity Assessment Integrating Domain-Related Information

Abstract

[Abstract] The fundus of the eye is the only part of the human body that allows a direct non-invasive observation of the circulatory system. Retinal vascular tortuosity presents a valuable potential for diagnostic and treatment purposes of relevant vascular and systemic diseases. This work presents a computational metric for the tortuosity characterization that combines mathematical representations of the vessel segments with anatomical properties of the fundus image such as the vessel caliber, the distance to the optic disc, the distance to the fovea and the distinction between arteries and veins. The evaluation of the prognostic performance shows that the incorporation of the domain-related information allows a reliable characterization of the retinal vascular tortuosity that provides a better representation of the expert perception.