Redes neurais multinível para classificação do ângulo da câmara anterior utilizando Imagens OCT-SA

Abstract

Glaucoma is identified as one of the main causes of visual impairment, and the main cause of irreversible blindness. The main forms of the disease are primary open-angle glaucoma and primary angle-closure glaucoma. In people with angle-closure glaucoma, the anterior chamber angle narrows, consequently causing an increase in intraocular pressure causing damage to the optic nerve, causing partial or total vision loss. As the damage is irreversible, an early diagnosis is essential, but it is hampered due to the fact that the disease is asymptomatic in early stages. For early detection of the disease, routine imaging tests are recommended, one of which is Anterior Segment Optical Coherence Tomography, which allows an angle classification, which is essential for diagnosis. An analysis of this type of image requires a degree of interpretation on the part of specialists, because of this, the evaluation of many images requires a lot of time, which can lead to professional fatigue. The use of automated methods to assist in the interpretation of images would contribute to get diagnoses more quickly. In this work, an automated method is proposed to classify the anterior chamber angle, present in Anterior Segment images, based on deep learning, using convolutional neural networks. Initially, five pre-trained models of convolutional networks were adjusted to perform feature extraction and classify images. Next, the models were combined in a multilevel architecture, with the objective of increasing the classification capacity. As best result achieved an AUC value (Area Under the Curve) of 0.999.