Multimodal Segmentation of Optic Disc and Cup from SD-OCT and Color Fundus Photographs Using a Machine-Learning Graph-Based Approach

Abstract

In this work, a multimodal approach is proposed to use the complementary information from fundus photographs and spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) volumes in order to segment the optic disc and cup boundaries. The problem is formulated as an optimization problem where the optimal solution is obtained using a machine-learning theoretical graph-based method. In particular, first the fundus photograph is registered to the 2D projection of the SD-OCT volume. Three in-region cost functions are designed using a random forest classifier corresponding to three regions of cup, rim, and background. Next, the volumes are resampled to create radial scans in which the Bruch's Membrane Opening (BMO) endpoints are easier to detect. Similar to in-region cost function design, the disc-boundary cost function is designed using a random forest classifier for which the features are created by applying the Haar Stationary Wavelet Transform (SWT) to the radial projection image. A multisurface graph-based approach utilizes the in-region and disc-boundary cost images to segment the boundaries of optic disc and cup under feasibility constraints. The approach is evaluated on 25 multimodal image pairs from 25 subjects in a leave-one-out fashion (by subject). The performances of the graph-theoretic approach using three sets of cost functions are compared: 1) using unimodal (OCT only) in-region costs, 2) using multimodal in-region costs, and 3) using multimodal in-region and disc-boundary costs. Results show that the multimodal approaches outperform the unimodal approach in segmenting the optic disc and cup.