Three-dimensional shape-aware measurement of choroidal thickness in OCT images

Le résumé fourni par la source

The choroid is a dense vascular layer located between the retina and sclera. Recent advances in optical coherence tomography (OCT), which enables non-invasive visualization of three-dimensional (3D) internal structures, have revealed associations between morphological changes and ocular diseases. Among these, choroidal thickness has been extensively investigated as a particularly important parameter. Choroidal thickness is typically measured perpendicularly from the upper to lower boundaries of the choroid, but most conventional measurement methods rely on two-dimensional cross-sectional OCT images and do not sufficiently account for 3D deformation of the choroidal morphology or the curvature of the eye, which may lead to discrepancies from the true anatomical structure. In this study, we propose a method for automatically measuring choroidal thickness from 3D OCT. The proposed method calculates thickness by estimating a normal vector from an arbitrary point on the upper choroidal boundary while considering the surrounding surface geometry using a principal component analysis-based approach. Experimental results using clinical data from patients with central serous chorioretinopathy (CSC) before and after photodynamic therapy show that the proposed method provides anatomically reasonable measurements, as qualitatively verified by ophthalmologists. Choroidal thickness maps generated by integrating the measurement results across all points demonstrated post-treatment reductions in choroidal thickness in patients with CSC before and after photodynamic therapy.

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