21 Jul 21. Featured Paper

Reproducibility of retinal vascular phenotypes obtained with optical coherence tomography angiography: importance of vessel segmentation

Link to paper on Springer Nature

Authors

Darwon Rashid, Sophie Cai, Ylenia Giarratano, Calum Gray, Charlene Hamid, Dilraj S. Grewal, Tom MacGillivray, Sharon Fekrat, Cason B. Robbins, Srinath Soundararajan, Justin P. Ma, Miguel O. Bernabeu

Abstract

Optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) is a non-invasive imaging method that can visualize the finest vascular networks in the human retina.

OCTA image analysis has been successfully applied to the investigation of retinal vascular diseases of the eye & other systemic conditions that may manifest in the eye.

To characterize & distinguish OCTA images from different pathologies, it is important to identify quantitative metrics & phenotypes that have high reproducibility & are not overly susceptible to the effects of imaging artifacts.

This paper demonstrates the reproducibility of several recently demonstrated candidate OCTA quantitative metrics: mean curvature & tortuosity of the whole, foveal, superior, nasal, inferior, & temporal regions; foveal & parafoveal vessel skeleton density; & finally, foveal avascular zone area & acircularity index.

This paper also highlights the importance of vessel segmentation choice on reproducibility using two different segmentation methods: optimally oriented flux & Frangi filter.

Keywords

• OCTA imaging
• Reproducibility
• Retinal vascular phenotype