Deep learning segmentation of hyperautofluorescent fleck lesions in Stargardt disease

Jason Charng, Di Xiao, Maryam Mehdizadeh, Mary S. Attia, Sukanya Arunachalam, Tina M. Lamey, Jennifer A. Thompson, Terri L. McLaren, John N. De Roach, David A. Mackey, Shaun Frost, Fred K. Chen

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

12 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Stargardt disease is one of the most common forms of inherited retinal disease and leads to permanent vision loss. A diagnostic feature of the disease is retinal flecks, which appear hyperautofluorescent in fundus autofluorescence (FAF) imaging. The size and number of these flecks increase with disease progression. Manual segmentation of flecks allows monitoring of disease, but is time-consuming. Herein, we have developed and validated a deep learning approach for segmenting these Stargardt flecks (1750 training and 100 validation FAF patches from 37 eyes with Stargardt disease). Testing was done in 10 separate Stargardt FAF images and we observed a good overall agreement between manual and deep learning in both fleck count and fleck area. Longitudinal data were available in both eyes from 6 patients (average total follow-up time 4.2 years), with both manual and deep learning segmentation performed on all (n = 82) images. Both methods detected a similar upward trend in fleck number and area over time. In conclusion, we demonstrated the feasibility of utilizing deep learning to segment and quantify FAF lesions, laying the foundation for future studies using fleck parameters as a trial endpoint.

Original languageEnglish
Article number16491
JournalScientific Reports
Volume10
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Dec 2020

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Deep learning segmentation of hyperautofluorescent fleck lesions in Stargardt disease'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this