Automated retinal layer segmentation on optical coherence tomography image by combination of structure interpolation and lateral mean filtering

• Published in: Journal of innovative optical health science Vol. 14; no. 1; pp. 2140011-1 - 2140011-11
• Main Authors: Ma, Yushu, Gao, Yingzhe, Li, Zhaolin, Li, Ang, Wang, Yi, Liu, Jian, Yu, Yao, Shi, Wenbo, Ma, Zhenhe
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Singapore World Scientific Publishing Company 01-01-2021; World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte., Ltd; World Scientific Publishing
• Subjects: automatic segmentation; Blood vessels; Boundaries; Filtration; Identification methods; Image processing; Image segmentation; Interpolation; mean filtering; Medical imaging; Noise; Optical Coherence Tomography; Research Article; Retina; Retinal images; retinal layers; Signal to noise ratio; Tomography; Optical coherence tomography; automatic segmentation; mean filtering; retinal layers
• ISSN: 1793-5458; 1793-7205
• DOI: 10.1142/S1793545821400113

Segmentation of layers in retinal images obtained by optical coherence tomography (OCT) has become an important clinical tool to diagnose ophthalmic diseases. However, due to the susceptibility to speckle noise and shadow of blood vessels etc., the layer segmentation technology based on a single image still fail to reach a satisfactory level. We propose a combination method of structure interpolation and lateral mean filtering (SI-LMF) to improve the signal-to-noise ratio based on one retinal image. Before performing one-dimensional lateral mean filtering to remove noise, structure interpolation was operated to eliminate thickness fluctuations. Then, we used boundary growth method to identify boundaries. Compared with existing segmentations, the method proposed in this paper requires less data and avoids the influence of microsaccade. The automatic segmentation method was verified on the spectral domain OCT volume images obtained from four normal objects, which successfully identified the boundaries of 10 physiological layers, consistent with the results based on the manual determination.